Behavioral scientists have developed a virtual reality test that assesses a person’s vulnerability to stress while exploring immersive environments. The resulting model offers the field of stress research one of the first such tools that does not rely on subjective evaluations.

Any event that causes stress is called a «stressor.» Our bodies are equipped to handle acute exposure to stressors, but chronic exposure can result in mental disorders, e.g. anxiety and depression and even physical changes, e.g. cardiovascular alterations as seen in hypertension or stroke-disorders.

There has been significant effort to find a way to identify people who would be vulnerable to develop stress-related disorders. The problem is that most of that research has relied on self-reporting and subjective clinical rankings, or exposing subjects to non-naturalistic environments. Employing wearables and other sensing technologies have made some headway in the elderly and at-risk individuals, but given how different our lifestyles are, it has been hard to find objective markers of psychogenic disease.

Approaching the problem with VR

Now, behavioral scientists led by Carmen Sandi at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences have developed a virtual-reality (VR) method that measures a person’s susceptibility to psychogenic stressors. Building from previous animal studies, the new approach captures high-density locomotion information from a person while they explore two virtual environments in order to predict heart-rate variability when exposed to threatening or highly stressful situations.

Heart rate variability is emerging in the field as a strong indicator of vulnerability to physiological stress, and for developing psychopathologies and cardiovascular disorders.

Story Source: Materials provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Original written by Nik Papageorgiou. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.