A Personalised Emotion-Based Model for Relaxation in Virtual Reality

Abstract

One of the most frequent health problems is stress. It has been linked to negative effects on employee well-being in many occupations, and it is considered responsible for many physical and psychological problems. Traditional in-person relaxation therapy has proven to be effective in reducing stress. However, it has some drawbacks such as high cost, required infrastructure and the need for qualified trainers. Relaxation therapy in Virtual Reality (VR) tries to solve these problems. However, one aspect has received little attention, that is personalised therapy. Indeed, while many studies show the need for patient-tailored relaxation exercises, little existing work focuses on personalised VR content. One reason for this is the complexity of recognising emotions, which is required for emotion-based adaptive VR. In this work, a method for adapting VR content to the emotional state of the user is presented. This model has been applied in a VR relaxation therapy application, which adapts to the user’s emotional state utilising a heuristic optimiser. Simulations have proven the performance and usability of the emotion model. Additionally, this paper explores the impact of the order in which adaptations are performed on the effectiveness of the relaxation experience.

The Role of Personalization in the User Experience, Preferences and Engagement with Virtual Reality Environments for Relaxation

“…Personalized VR scenarios are characterized by particular multi-sensorial content and can be tailored to users’ relevant preferences and needs [ 28 , 32 , 33 ]. Exposure to a personalized environment enhances the users’ involvement and their sense of presence [ 30 , 31 , 34 , 35 , 36 ] by exploiting VR’s capacity to remove many of the distracting factors in the natural world and, consequently, facilitating immersion and relaxation [ 37 ]. These digital interventions may also help reduce the costs of standard psychotherapy treatments, in addition to being increasingly scalable and able to lower costs [ 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”

“…They help to standardize and offer remote access to psychological and medical treatments, as required by the current COVID-19 pandemic context [ 41 ]. A recent study proposed a personalized VR model for relaxation, based on critical variables (including the personalities and emotional states of individuals) that were modelled and controlled by an algorithm used to customize the VR environment according to users’ needs and profiles [ 37 ].…”

“…However, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have explored the role of personalization of VR-based scenarios on the user experience [ 37 ], and the effect of the integration of relaxation training in VREs. One of the most recent studies in this direction [ 18 ] showed that being exposed to a virtual environment for relaxation, including a body-scan-guiding audio track, should help improve the participants’ relaxation compared to VREs including a breathing control audio track.…”

From Patient to Musician: A Multi-Sensory Virtual Reality Rehabilitation Tool for Spatial Neglect

“…Nevertheless, VR is increasing in popularity in a clinical setting. A tool for the rehabilitation of children with dystonic cerebral palsy [59], limb pain alleviation [60] and VR exposure therapy for anxiety disorders [61] are just a few examples of the clinical applications of VR [62][63][64][65][66][67]. Other mixed reality tools, such as Augmented Reality (AR), have also found their way into clinical applications, e.g., neurosurgery [68,69].…”

From virtual to real healing: a critical overview of the therapeutic use of virtual reality to cope with mourning

“…A careful process of personalization, based on the objective of the intervention, the tolerance of pain expressed by the users, and on users' personal accounts of relevant autobiographical stimuli might strengthen the efficacy of VR for grief and reduce the risk of causing harm to participants. The importance of personalization has been increasingly stressed in the field of VR interventions, in particular in relaxation (Heyse et al, 2019;Heyse et al, 2020;Pizzoli et al, 2019) and PTSD treatment (Baños et al, 2011;Botella et al, 2010). Interestingly, possible target persons for VR for grief might be those who present symptoms that resemble post-traumatic or anxious symptoms, which tend to be chronic in the 40% of the bereaved subjects (Zisook et al, 1998) and that is more likely to be present after violent deaths (Kaltman & Bonanno, 2003).…”