Key result
VR biofeedback breathing training increases heart rate variability under stress compared to controls.
Why the study?
Physiological regulation strategies reduce anxiety but are often learned under low stress, despite typically being required under high-stress conditions.
Does virtual reality biofeedback breathing training improve heart rate variability under stress in healthy participants?
Does virtual reality biofeedback breathing training improve heart rate variability under stress in healthy participants?
Absolute Event Rate: 3.37% vs 0.22%
p-value: p=0.008
VR-based biofeedback games offer a feasible and effective modality to train physiological regulation strategies that can be successfully deployed under subsequent acute stress.
VR biofeedback breathing may boost acute HRV under stress in healthy adults; hypothesis-generating for clinical stress disorders.
Physiological regulation strategies can be effective in reducing anxiety. However, while these strategies are often learned and practised under low-stress conditions, they are more likely to be required under conditions of high stress. We created virtual reality (VR) biofeedback games to both teach participants a breathing technique and then practise that technique under stress. We present two studies: the first provides a proof of concept, demonstrating that participants can apply the breathing technique during stress, with a significant lowering of both respiration rate and increase in heart rate variability (HRV) under stress (p < .001). The second study explicitly evaluated the effectiveness of training by comparing trained and untrained groups. Training was associated with a significantly greater HRV (p = .008) under stress. In within-group comparisons of HRV during stress compared to a baseline stressor presented before training, the trained group showed a significantly greater increase compared to untrained controls (p = .025). Our results show the feasibility and potential effectiveness of VR-based games for biofeedback training under experimentally applied stress. This may offer the opportunity for clinical techniques to more closely reflect the circumstances under which those techniques will be required.
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Daniel‐Watanabe et al. (2024) studied Healthy participants undergoing experimentally induced stress (n=124). Virtual reality (VR) biofeedback games for breathing technique training vs. No training (untrained controls) was evaluated on Baseline-normalized heart rate variability (cvSDNN) during a stressful VR experience (p=0.008). Virtual reality biofeedback breathing training significantly increased baseline-normalized heart rate variability (cvSDNN 3.37 vs 0.22, p=0.008) under stress compared to an untrained control group.
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