Viscereality: Bioresponsive Virtual Reality for Box Breathing and Altered-State Experience
George Fejer, Till Holzapfel, Taru Hirvonen, Anestis Lalidis Mateo, Johannes Blum, Michael Gaebler, Bigna Lenggenhager
preprint DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-10842634/v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Preregistered within-subjects experimental study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 39 |
| Population | Adult participants in a virtual-reality box-breathing study |
| Intervention | Box breathing |
| Duration | Three 10-minute sessions |
| Key findings | Pooled virtual-reality conditions improved breathing synchronization, increased perceived spatial extension of the self, and produced altered-state profiles with strong Perceptual Effects, moderate Positive Effects, and weaker Distressing Effects compared with a dark-screen control. Participants detected some symmetry-relevant features above chance but did not reliably identify the symmetric session, and the two virtual-reality mappings showed no outcome differences. The authors state these findings do not establish that bioresponsiveness rather than visual engagement caused the differences. |
Abstract
Abstract Breath-based interactions in virtual reality typically map breathing onto discrete visual objects or physiological proxies. Viscereality instead translates respiratory state into a surrounding particle field, mapping lung volume onto external space so that inhalation expands the environment and exhalation contracts it. Because particle fields have no fixed boundary, they can convey information through the motion and interactions of many simple elements. We tested whether this virtual-reality paradigm could reliably elicit altered-state experiences during box breathing, whether transient symmetric particle coupling would further influence subjective experience, and whether participants could identify the manipulation. In a preregistered within-subjects study, 39 participants completed three counterbalanced 10-minute audio-guided box-breathing sessions: a high-symmetry virtual-reality condition, an asymmetric virtual-reality condition, and a dark-screen control. We assessed breathing adherence, altered states of consciousness, pictographic self-related measures, and sensitivity to the symmetry manipulation. Relative to the dark-screen control, the pooled virtual-reality conditions improved breathing synchronization, increased ratings of the perceived spatial extension of the self, and produced altered-state profiles with strong Perceptual Effects, moderate Positive Effects, and weaker Distressing Effects. Participants detected some symmetry-relevant features above chance, but neither reliably identified which session was symmetric nor showed outcome differences between the two virtual-reality mappings. These findings show that the overall virtual-reality paradigm produced reliable experiential differences from the control, but they do not establish that bioresponsiveness rather than visual engagement caused those differences. The specific affective contribution of particle symmetry, and whether it requires explicit awareness, therefore remain unresolved.