A Novel Perspective for Examining and Comparing Real and Virtual Test Tasks Performed by the Dominant and Non-Dominant Hand in Healthy Adults

Abstract

This study presents a novel perspective for the study of functional lateralization in a virtual reality environment. In the model study of handedness, the recognition of the dominant and non-dominant hand in real and virtual conditions was assessed using selected tests, such as a real light exposure test of Piórkowski’s apparatus and classical clinical tests, as well as virtual test tasks, in healthy adults. Statistically significant differences between the dominant and non-dominant hand were observed for tests carried out both in classical conditions and the virtual environment. The results and findings of other studies suggest that the virtual reality approach is a very promising and sensitive tool in the research on functional asymmetries in healthy and disease for motor skills and cognition processes.

Being in Virtual Reality and Its Influence on Brain Health—An Overview of Benefits, Limitations and Prospects

“…This allows the therapist/system to tailor the level of difficulty to the specific patient, thus providing a highly personalized therapeutic program. The Neuroforma environment, which we use in our modeling studies, works in a similar way [28][29][30]. (which is at MMRI PAS, from our lab repository, with Titanis's permission).…”

“…Sokołowska 2021 [28,29] The research proposed a novel model-based approach to assessing functional lateralization of the brain and demonstrated highly effective recognition of functional and postural asymmetries using non-immersive VE in healthy adults. [56] The research team proposed an interesting project to explore the analgesic effect of VE in healthy adults.…”

“…In addition, VEs are increasingly being incorporated into research and evaluation of natural aging processes or effective support in (neuro)geriatric care (e.g., preventing falls or improving cognitive function in the elderly) [21,70,71]. Model studies with healthy participants are important and interesting in evaluating/testing new technologies [4,28,29,[54][55][56].…”

“…Virtual environments are offered with different degrees of immersion: non-immersive, partial immersion and full immersion [9,18,23,[88][89][90]. We carried out our research in the non-immersive virtual environment created by the Neuroforma system [28][29][30]. Such environments are willingly used due to the fact that there are practically no adverse symptoms related to being in them or participating in virtual tests, tasks and training.…”

Unveiling gender differences: a mixed reality multitasking exploration

“…Analyzing the hand-use variable in MR multitasking contributes to addressing this research limitation more effectively. Sokołowska (2021) conducted a modeling study of handedness to recognize dominant and non-dominant hands in both real and virtual conditions. The study found a statistically significant difference between dominant and non-dominant hands in both environments.…”