BizarreVR: Dream-like bizarreness in immersive virtual reality induced changes in conscious experience of reality while leaving spatial presence intact.

Abstract

Differences in conscious experience of reality occur between waking, dreaming, and psychotic states. Between these states, there are systematic differences in the judgment about the reality of the experience when being confronted with bizarre breaks. However, the mechanisms underlying experience of reality in these different states are still unknown. To investigate the effect of bizarre breaks on experience of reality during the wake state, we propose a new paradigm using dream-like bizarreness and immersive virtual reality. Results showed that the realistic non-bizarre virtual environment induced high levels of reality judgment and spatial presence, whereas the confrontation with bizarre breaks induced high levels of experienced bizarreness. Moreover, experienced bizarreness significantly reduced reality judgment in both the bizarre and the realistic condition. Further, there was no effect of bizarre breaks on spatial presence. These results provide proof of concept for the new method to elicit natural bizarre experience within a realistic scenario.