Virtual reality-based sensorimotor adaptation shapes subsequent spontaneous and naturalistic stimulus-driven brain activity

Abstract

Our everyday life summons numerous novel sensorimotor experiences, to which our brain needs to adapt in order to function properly. However, tracking plasticity of naturalistic behaviour and associated brain modulations is challenging. Here we tackled this question implementing a prism adaptation training in virtual reality (VRPA) in combination with functional neuroimaging. Three groups of healthy participants (N=45) underwent VRPA (with a spatial shift either to the left/right side, or with no shift), and performed fMRI sessions before and after training. To capture modulations in free-flowing, task-free brain activity, the fMRI sessions included resting state and free viewing of naturalistic videos. We found significant decreases in spontaneous functional connectivity between large-scale cortical networks, namely attentional and default mode/fronto-parietal networks, only for adaptation groups. Additionally, VRPA was found to bias visual representations of naturalistic videos, as following rightward adaptation, we found upregulation of visual response in an area in the parieto-occipital sulcus (POS) in the right hemisphere. Notably, the extent of POS upregulation correlated with the size of the VRPA induced after-effect measured in behavioural tests. This study demonstrates that a brief VRPA exposure is able to change large-scale cortical connectivity and correspondingly bias the representation of naturalistic sensory inputs.

Investigating and acquiring motor expertise using virtual reality

“…VR could be used to design motor learning tasks of the requisite intermediate complexity better suited to longitudinal study. That said, despite increasing enthusiasm for VR as a research tool [38,39], tasks have largely remained simple and have cleaved close to their traditional 2-D counterparts (e.g., [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]). Only a handful of studies have attempted to utilize rich virtual environments to motor expertise in real-world complex tasks.…”

Investigating and acquiring motor expertise using virtual reality

“…VR could be used to design motor learning tasks of the requisite intermediate complexity better suited to longitudinal study. That said, despite increasing enthusiasm for VR as a research tool [38,39], tasks have largely remained simple and have cleaved close to their traditional 2-D counterparts (e.g., [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]). Only a handful of studies have attempted to utilize rich virtual environments to motor expertise in real-world complex tasks.…”