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Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review

Over the past decades, virtual reality (VR) has found its way into biofeedback (BF) therapy programs. Using VR promises to overcome challenges encountered in traditional BF such as low treatment motivation, low attentional focus and the difficulty of transferring learnt abilities to everyday life. Y...

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Autores principales: Lüddecke, Robin, Felnhofer, Anna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8831282/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34860290
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09529-9
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author Lüddecke, Robin
Felnhofer, Anna
author_facet Lüddecke, Robin
Felnhofer, Anna
author_sort Lüddecke, Robin
collection PubMed
description Over the past decades, virtual reality (VR) has found its way into biofeedback (BF) therapy programs. Using VR promises to overcome challenges encountered in traditional BF such as low treatment motivation, low attentional focus and the difficulty of transferring learnt abilities to everyday life. Yet, a comprehensive research synthesis is still missing. Hence, this scoping review aims to provide an overview over empirical studies on VR based BF regarding key outcomes, included samples, used soft- and hardware, BF parameters, mode of application and potential limitations. We systematically searched Medline, PsycINFO, Scopus, CINAHL, Google Scholar and Open Grey for empirical research. Eighteen articles met the inclusion criteria. Samples mostly consisted of healthy (44.4%) and/or adult (77.7%) participants. Outcomes were mainly anxiety (44.4%), stress (44.4%) or pain reduction (11.1%), which were reduced by the VR-BF interventions at least as much as by classical BF. Participants in VR-BF interventions showed higher motivation and involvement as well as a better user experience. Heart rate or heart rate variability were the most frequently used BF parameters (50.0%), and most VR-BF interventions (72.2%) employed a natural environment (e.g., island). Currently, there is no clear evidence that VR-BF is more effective than traditional BF. Yet, results indicate that VR-BF may have advantages regarding motivation, user experience, involvement and attentional focus. Further research is needed to assess the specific impact of VR and gamification. Also, testing a broader range of clinical and younger samples would allow more far-reaching conclusions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10484-021-09529-9.
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spelling pubmed-88312822022-02-23 Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review Lüddecke, Robin Felnhofer, Anna Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback Article Over the past decades, virtual reality (VR) has found its way into biofeedback (BF) therapy programs. Using VR promises to overcome challenges encountered in traditional BF such as low treatment motivation, low attentional focus and the difficulty of transferring learnt abilities to everyday life. Yet, a comprehensive research synthesis is still missing. Hence, this scoping review aims to provide an overview over empirical studies on VR based BF regarding key outcomes, included samples, used soft- and hardware, BF parameters, mode of application and potential limitations. We systematically searched Medline, PsycINFO, Scopus, CINAHL, Google Scholar and Open Grey for empirical research. Eighteen articles met the inclusion criteria. Samples mostly consisted of healthy (44.4%) and/or adult (77.7%) participants. Outcomes were mainly anxiety (44.4%), stress (44.4%) or pain reduction (11.1%), which were reduced by the VR-BF interventions at least as much as by classical BF. Participants in VR-BF interventions showed higher motivation and involvement as well as a better user experience. Heart rate or heart rate variability were the most frequently used BF parameters (50.0%), and most VR-BF interventions (72.2%) employed a natural environment (e.g., island). Currently, there is no clear evidence that VR-BF is more effective than traditional BF. Yet, results indicate that VR-BF may have advantages regarding motivation, user experience, involvement and attentional focus. Further research is needed to assess the specific impact of VR and gamification. Also, testing a broader range of clinical and younger samples would allow more far-reaching conclusions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10484-021-09529-9. Springer US 2021-12-03 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8831282/ /pubmed/34860290 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09529-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Lüddecke, Robin
Felnhofer, Anna
Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title_full Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title_fullStr Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title_full_unstemmed Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title_short Virtual Reality Biofeedback in Health: A Scoping Review
title_sort virtual reality biofeedback in health: a scoping review
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8831282/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34860290
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10484-021-09529-9
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