Virtual Reality and EEG
The brain has been shaped over millions of years by the demands of a three-dimensional, dynamic world. Forged under evolutionary pressure to interact with a rich spatial and temporal milieu, it is fundamentally attuned to environments that unfold in continuous time and space. Although much of modern life is spent engaging with flat screens of various sizes, this is not the ecological biome in which the brain evolved. To understand how the brain actually works, we must study it in contexts that approximate the conditions under which it was adapted.
This line of research combines immersive virtual reality with high-density electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate cognitive and emotional processes under conditions that transcend the constraints of conventional laboratory paradigms while preserving rigorous experimental control. Across a series of studies, richly interactive environments are used to probe perception, embodiment, presence, affective processing, and decision-making as they unfold in dynamic, spatially extended worlds.
Methodologically, this work establishes VR–EEG as a robust and reliable approach for cognitive neuroscience, addressing key challenges related to signal quality, motion artifact, and ecological validity. Empirical findings reveal that immersive context systematically modulates neural markers of sensory processing, attention, and affect, demonstrating that electrophysiological dynamics in lifelike settings differ meaningfully from those observed in traditional screen-based tasks.
Conceptually, this research underscores that the brain’s mode of operation cannot be fully understood in isolation from the environments in which it evolved to function. By embedding participants in controlled but lifelike virtual settings, these studies bridge the gap between laboratory neuroscience and real-world behavior, providing a framework for understanding how brains construct meaning, regulate emotion, and guide action in complex environments.
Debunking the Monkey
Inattentional blindness is a hot topic in attentional research. It is a study every psychology student encounters at the very beginning of his or her career. It is unbelievable that we would miss a man in a gorilla costume walking by only because we are counting passes of a basketball team. Simons’ and Chabris’s study won what is considered the Nobel Prize of psychology for good reason. But what if our intuition was right all along, and we would see the gorilla?
In a study in which we showed the same video in VR and under conventional 2D laboratory conditions, the gorilla was still hard to detect in 2D (30% noticing rate), but in VR that climbed to 70%. After all, we do see gorillas under realistic conditions.
You better run! The study
If you want to have a burger, you have to kill a cow. If you want to study fear, you have to instill fear in your participants. Real fear. The purpose of emotions is to trigger an environment-specific behavioral response. Fear should make you run or fight. However, nowadays we consume fear for fun, because screens let us enjoy it in a safe environment. It is detached from its evolutionary purpose. This is also how we study fear in the psychological laboratory: we present scary images on a screen. Not very scary. But what if we reduce the safety net? Then you end up with a werewolf in a mixed reality study with real fear behavior.
Facing VR
We humans are a social species. Our survival used to depend on whether we could read the intentions of other people - either good or bad. Although we are pretty much used to seeing faces in 2D on screens, that is not what our brain has learned to do. Foremost, these 2D faces and their emotional displays are pretty much irrelevant to us — super important Teams meetings excluded. Not surprising, face perception has been studied for decades and the distinguished brain signals and areas indicating human face processing have been identified, like the N170 and the FFA. But did we capture real-life face perception? This study compares face perception in 2D and in VR and, as expected, face perception is much more complex than psychological science has led us to believe.
Is virtual reality real?
It’s in the name, isn’t it? Well, that is a marketing term, and just because it feels real does not mean it is real. What does “real” even mean in this context? Why would a screen glued to your face create reality? Albeit fun, 3D cinemas are also not called real.
The working theory for this study was: when the brain processes VR stimuli like, or at least very similar to, real-world stimuli on a phenomenological level, we can call it sufficiently real. What else would count? What do you need to investigate this research question? Easy. A fire truck.
We sent participants 30 m up in VR or real life or in front of a large computer screen in order to compare electrophysiological processes between the three modalities. As a result, VR and real life were largely indistinguishable by their neural correlates, both differing from 2D.
Take a stroll in the luVRe
Do you want to do your own VR research but don’t know how to start? There is an easy way. We have hundreds of standardized videos and pictures we took all around the world in photorealistic 3D VR: from the skyscrapers of New York, to the alleys of London, and the famous Teutoburg Forest (see Varus). Run with the rhinos, but be careful - you might virtually end up in an emergency room… or at a funeral. Available for all research institutions free of charge. Well, just cite us!
