Differences in Brain Activity and Body Movements between Virtual Reality and Offline Exercise: A Randomized Crossover Trial (Preprint)

Abstract

Virtual reality has been suggested to be effective in enhancing physical exercise because of its immersive characteristics. However, few studies quantitatively assessed motion and brain activity during virtual reality exercises.

We hypothesized that virtual reality could stimulate body movement and brain activity more effectively than standard exercise and that increased body movements in virtual reality exercise would be associated with orbitofrontal activation.

A randomized crossover trial was conducted to compare exercises with virtual reality and without. Twenty-four healthy males performed the same motions when exercising with and without virtual reality, and the recorded videos were used for motion analysis. Hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex were assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

There were significant differences in the total angle (z=-2.31, P=.015), length (z=-2.78, P=.005), calorie consumption (z=-3.04, P=.002), and change in accumulated oxygenated hemoglobin within the right orbitofrontal cortex (F=9.36, P=.003) between the virtual reality and offline trials. Hemodynamic changes in the right orbitofrontal cortex were positively correlated with both the total angle (r=0.45, P=.001) and length (r=0.38, P=.007) in the virtual reality exercise, whereas there was no significant correlation in the offline trial.

The results of this study suggest that virtual reality exercise is effective in increasing the range of motion in healthy individuals, in relation to orbitofrontal activation.