Generative Multi-Sensory Meditation: Exploring Immersive Depth and Activation in Virtual Reality

A new AI-driven virtual reality application, MindfulVerse, generates personalized mindfulness meditation content by dynamically adjusting to individual users' ideas and states. In an exploratory user study, the generative meditation approach improved neural activation related to self-regulation and showed positive effects on emotional regulation and participation compared to standardized meditation frameworks.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Mindfulness meditation has seen increasing applications in diverse domains as an effective practice to improve mental health. However, the standardized frameworks adopted by most applications often fail to cater to users with various psychological states and health conditions. This limitation arises primarily from the lack of personalization and adaptive content design. To address this, we propose MindfulVerse, an AI-Generated Content (AIGC)-driven application to create personalized and immersive mindfulness experiences. By developing a novel agent, the system can dynamically adjust the meditation content based on the ideas of individual users. Furthermore, we conducted exploratory user studies and comparative evaluations to assess the application scenarios and performance of our novel generative meditation tool in VR environments. The results of this user study indicate that generative meditation improves neural activation in self-regulation and shows a positive impact on emotional regulation and participation. Our approach offers a generative meditation procedure that provides users with an application that better suits their preferences and states.