A study of how Virtual Reality and Brain Computer Interface can manipulate the brain

Abstract

The brain computer interface (BCI) is one of the technologies that has a lot of potential for helping people with physiological and physical difficulties. This technology could be used to treat disabled individuals or assist them with daily duties that they are unable to perform owing to their ailments. By fooling the brain to redirect the senses and discomfort, this could also help chronic pain patients forget about their pain. When a person is immersed in a virtual environment, this technology and Virtual Reality (VR) can both be used to teach patients or influence the brain. The users are immersed in a reality that does not exist, but the brain accepts it and allows them to experience things that are not yet possible for a human to do. By combining these two technologies to develop an application and conduct study into how these two technologies, for example, can assist patients suffering from pain in any region of their body. These strategies can aid recovery while also making the process less tedious than traditional ways. An interactive simulation that patients can engage with or a brain-controlled robot that can help patients will be effective and useful. This application also can be used to create a computer and mechanical interface which a user can control a machine or device with, or even a mouse pointer by only thinking about it. A paralyzed person might not be able to move his/her arm, but the signal from the brain is constantly sending to the arm from brain, allows them to control a mechanical arm instead. We can enable people with disabilities do things that are impossible for them to do by taking those signals and allowing a mechanical arm to do what an actual arm would do. The possibilities and application for these technologies are vast, brain to brain communication is nothing new to discuss, but it will be possible to create such a device that two people from two side of the planet can feel each other's feeling and communicate via their brain. In this research, we studied how we can utilize this system to manipulate the brain to help patients recover faster. Our focus in this study is development of BCI and VR applications that can be useful to help chronic patients and disable people. Furthermore, we studied how we could develop a gamified interactive environment for patients to aid in their recovery as they are enjoying their time interacting with these tools in a virtual world.