Virtual Reality as a Neural State-Modulating Technology: EEG Complexity During VR Gameplay Versus VR Gameplay Viewing

Abstract

Pharmacological agents and brain stimulation can modulate conscious states, but offer limited control over the structure of the experience itself. Virtual reality (VR) can alter subjective experience while allowing its structure to be experimentally controlled. Neural signal complexity has been used to characterize altered states under psychedelics and anesthesia, but its profile during immersive task absorption remains unclear. We compared VR gameplay with VR gameplay viewing in 36 adults, combining electroencephalography (EEG) with assessments of flow and ego dissolution. Participants either actively played an immersive VR game or passively viewed a prerecorded first-person gameplay video full-screen in the headset. We quantified Lempel-Ziv complexity, sample entropy, approximate entropy, and singular value decomposition entropy. VR gameplay was associated with lower EEG complexity across four broadband measures, with large effects at frontal and parietal midline sites (all corrected p < .001). The VR gameplay group also reported higher flow ( d = 1.17) and, in an exploratory comparison, higher ego dissolution ( d = 1.11). Within-condition correlations between complexity and either subjective measure did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. These findings extend neural-complexity research on altered states to immersive gameplay. VR’s capacity to vary the content and structure of an activity provides an experimental route to studying how designed experiences shape conscious state, with their neural and experiential effects assessed together.