Exploratory fNIRS Assessment of Differences in Activation in Virtual Reality Visual Self-Expression Including With a Fragrance Stimulus

Abstract

A within-subjects experimental design examined differences in functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) assessment of prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation with two virtual reality (VR) drawing conditions (rote tracing and creative self-expression) with and without a fragrance stimulus. Participants were healthy adults and included 18 women, 6 men: age range ¼ 18-54 years. Findings indicate significant differences such that rote tracing resulted in higher PFC activity than the creative self-expression task. Although there was no significant impact of fragrance on the overall sample, emergent differences in responsiveness to fragrance were seen by age and gender. The study suggests that repetitive tasks like rote tracing can enhance focus and the creative self-expressive tasks can reduce PFC load and induce relaxation and flow.

fNIRS neuroimaging in olfactory research: A systematic literature review

“…The recent development of in-house custom systems for odor research has also shown a tendency toward low channel density, as in the case of Moein et al ( 2020 ) and Chen et al ( 2021 ). The need to combine fNIRS with other wearable systems, particularly virtual reality headsets, may also contribute to lower channel numbers (Kaimal et al, 2021 ). It should be noted that six studies did not report channel density information, so were excluded from Figure 5 .…”

“…fresh flower petals, collected on the day of testing as a stimulus, allowing the odor to diffuse into the air within a pressure container. Five studies implemented odor delivery mechanisms aiming to diffuse odor into the environment around the participant, including below the participants nose with the use of a wearable odor tray (Onuma and Sakai, 2018 ; Song et al, 2019 ; Tomono and Tomono, 2020 ; Kaimal et al, 2021 ; Tomono et al, 2021 ). One of these studies, Tomono and Tomono ( 2020 ) expelled odor vapor via a airflow generator toward the participant, whilst also measuring odor concentration produced to check odor concentration consistency ( Figure 11d ).…”

“…Similarly, Tanida et al ( 2008 ) tested mental arithmetic prior to and after exposing participants to a floral fragrance for 4weeks. Virtual reality was implemented in one study with and without a relaxant fragrance to the influence of odor on creativity and the ability to free-draw (Kaimal et al, 2021 ). This study can be seen in Figure 11e .…”

“… Depicts fNIRS task set-ups for four studies, two include viewing videos, one using virtual reality. Figures adapted from: (a,b) Song et al ( 2019 ), (c) Jo et al ( 2013 ), (d) Tomono et al ( 2021 ), and (e) Kaimal et al ( 2021 ). …”

“…Seven studies observed significant decreases in [HbO2] in response to various odors, e.g., relaxing essential oil odors during a massage (Eto et al, 2015(Eto et al, , 2016, olive oil odor (Mitsukura et al, 2021), forest odor (Song et al, 2019), Hinoki oil (Ikei et al, 2015), rose and orange oil (Igarashi et al, 2014), and floral spray (Tanida et al, 2008). It is important to note that some studies observed no significant effect of odor on cerebral hemodynamics (Maharjan et al, 2018;Kaimal et al, 2021;Tomono et al, 2021). Two studies reported [HbT] only (Fujii et al, 2007;Kokan et al, 2011).…”