{"id":212188,"date":"2025-04-23T05:16:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/virtual-reality-research-shows-how-temporary-anxiety-can-affect-learning"},"modified":"2025-04-23T05:16:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:16:03","slug":"virtual-reality-research-shows-how-temporary-anxiety-can-affect-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/virtual-reality-research-shows-how-temporary-anxiety-can-affect-learning","title":{"rendered":"Virtual reality research shows how temporary anxiety can affect learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LlbM8Wg-pKw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A brief episode of anxiety may have a bigger influence on a person\u2019s ability to learn what is safe and what is not. Research recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41539-025-00305-6\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>npj Science of Learning<\/i> has used a virtual reality game that involved picking flowers with bees in some of the blossoms that would sting the participant\u2014simulated by a mild electrical stimulation on the hand.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers worked with 70 neurotypical participants between the ages of 20 and 30. Claire Marino, a research assistant in the ZVR Lab, and Pavel Rjabtsenkov, a Neuroscience graduate student at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, were co-first authors of the study.<\/p>\n<p>Their team found that the people who learned to distinguish between the safe and dangerous areas\u2014where the bees were and were not\u2014showed better spatial memory and had lower <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/anxiety\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">anxiety<\/a>, while participants who did not learn the different areas had higher anxiety and heightened fear even in safe areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A brief episode of anxiety may have a bigger influence on a person\u2019s ability to learn what is safe and what is not. Research recently published in npj Science of Learning has used a virtual reality game that involved picking flowers with bees in some of the blossoms that would sting the participant\u2014simulated by a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47,1879],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience","category-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}