scholarly journals Is Virtual Reality Breathing Better Than Mindful Breathing For Pain Modulation? Our Yin-Yang Brains Have The Answers! (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Su Hu ◽  
Katherine Beard ◽  
Mary C Bender ◽  
Thiago D Nascimento ◽  
Sean Petty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Pain Modulation ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Neuronal Processes ◽  
Auditory Experience ◽  
Anterior Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Visual Cortical

UNSTRUCTURED Pain is a complex experience that involves sensory-discriminative and cognitive-emotional neuronal processes. It has long been known across cultures to be relieved by mindful breathing (MB). There is a common assumption that MB exerts its analgesic effect by interoception and distraction. Interoception means the conscious refocusing of the mind’s attention to the physical sensation of an organ function, while distraction consists of the competing attention of concurrent sensory experiences. In the current study, we dissected these central analgesic processes by imaging the brains of two groups of healthy subjects exposed to either a traditional MB (TMB) or a virtual reality breathing (VRB) protocol. The VRB protocol involved an in-house developed VR 3D-lungs that synchronized with the participants’ breathing cycles in real-time, providing the participant with an immersive visual-auditory experience. We found that both breathing techniques led to significant pain threshold increase after week-long practices, measured by a thermal quantitative sensory test. However, their underlying analgesic neural mechanisms were opposite as revealed by the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data. The TMB technique induced a mind-body connection pattern in the brain. The anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) connected with and modulated other cortical regions to a state of mindfulness, reappraising the ascending noxious inputs. Whereas the VRB practice induced a mind-body disconnection pattern, in which the overpowered audio-visual cortical regions functionally disconnected from the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), disengaging the central sensory-discriminative processing of the ascending noxious inputs by the immersive 3D experience.

scholarly journals Interpersonal Synchrony Special Issue The role of anterior prefrontal cortex (area 10) in face-to-face deception measured with fNIRS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pinti ◽  
Andrea Devoto ◽  
Isobel Greenhalgh ◽  
Ilias Tachtsidis ◽  
Paul W Burgess ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Lie Detection ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Interpersonal Synchrony ◽  
Anterior Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract Anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC, Brodmann area 10) activations are often, but not always, found in neuroimaging studies investigating deception, and the precise role of this area remains unclear. To explore the role of the PFC in face-to-face deception, we invited pairs of participants to play a card game involving lying and lie detection while we used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to record brain activity in the PFC. Participants could win points for successfully lying about the value of their cards or for detecting lies. We contrasted patterns of brain activation when the participants either told the truth or lied, when they were either forced into this or did so voluntarily and when they either succeeded or failed to detect a lie. Activation in the anterior PFC was found in both lie production and detection, unrelated to reward. Analysis of cross-brain activation patterns between participants identified areas of the PFC where the lead player’s brain activity synchronized their partner’s later brain activity. These results suggest that during situations that involve close interpersonal interaction, the anterior PFC supports processing widely involved in deception, possibly relating to the demands of monitoring one’s own and other people’s behaviour.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of newsvendor-based decision making in the human brain: An exploratory study to link neuroeconomics with neuroimaging using fNIRS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hashini Wanniarachchi ◽  
Yan Lang ◽  
Xinlong Wang ◽  
Sridhar Nerur ◽  
Kay-Yut Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Profit Margin ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Cortical Regions

AbstractNeuroeconomics with neuroimaging is a novel approach involving economics and neuroscience. The newsvendor problem (NP) is a prevalent economics concept that may be used to map brain activations during NP-evoked risky decision making. In this study, we hypothesized that key brain regions responsible for NP are dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Twenty-seven human subjects participated in the study using 40 NP trials; the participants were randomly assigned to a group with a low-profit margin (LM) or high-profit margin (HM) treatment. Cerebral hemodynamic responses were recorded simultaneously during the NP experiments from all participants with a 77-channel functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) system. After data preprocessing, general linear model was applied to generate brain activation maps, followed by statistical t-tests. The results showed that: (a) DLPFC and OFC were significantly evoked by NP versus baseline regardless of treatment types; (b) DLPFC and OFC were activated by HM versus baseline; and (c) DLPFC was activated during LM versus baseline. Furthermore, significant deactivation in right DLPFC was shown due to LM with respect to HM. This study affirms that DLPFC and OFC are two key cortical regions when solving NP. In particular, right DLPFC was found to be more deactivated under challenging risk decision making.

scholarly journals Detecting Fear of Heights Response to a Virtual Reality Environment Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciënne A. de With ◽  
Nattapong Thammasan ◽  
Mannes Poel
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Fear Response ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Grand Average ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Fear Of Heights

To enable virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) that treats anxiety disorders by gradually exposing the patient to fear using virtual reality (VR), it is important to monitor the patient's fear levels during the exposure. Despite the evidence of a fear circuit in the brain as reflected by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the measurement of fear response in highly immersive VR using fNIRS is limited, especially in combination with a head-mounted display (HMD). In particular, it is unclear to what extent fNIRS can differentiate users with and without anxiety disorders and detect fear response in a highly ecological setting using an HMD. In this study, we investigated fNIRS signals captured from participants with and without a fear of height response. To examine the extent to which fNIRS signals of both groups differ, we conducted an experiment during which participants with moderate fear of heights and participants without it were exposed to VR scenarios involving heights and no heights. The between-group statistical analysis shows that the fNIRS data of the control group and the experimental group are significantly different only in the channel located close to right frontotemporal lobe, where the grand average oxygenated hemoglobin Δ[HbO] contrast signal of the experimental group exceeds that of the control group. The within-group statistical analysis shows significant differences between the grand average Δ[HbO] contrast values during fear responses and those during no-fear responses, where the Δ[HbO] contrast values of the fear responses were significantly higher than those of the no-fear responses in the channels located towards the frontal part of the prefrontal cortex. Also, the channel located close to frontocentral lobe was found to show significant difference for the grand average deoxygenated hemoglobin contrast signals. Support vector machine-based classifier could detect fear responses at an accuracy up to 70% and 74% in subject-dependent and subject-independent classifications, respectively. The results demonstrate that cortical hemodynamic responses of a control group and an experimental group are different to a considerable extent, exhibiting the feasibility and ecological validity of the combination of VR-HMD and fNIRS to elicit and detect fear responses. This research thus paves a way toward the a brain-computer interface to effectively manipulate and control VRET.

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