A high-field human brain interface using a modular virtual environment system for real time fMRI

Introduction: In recent years, the field of virtual reality (VR) environments and neurofeedback applications for functional magnetic resonance imaging has grown. Often this artificial world is theorized to contribute to the successful pain reduction observed in burned patients as well as for therapy of phobias and posttraumatic stress disorder [1]. Other groups applied VR for fMRI-based neurofeedback paradigms and human brain interfaces [2][3][4]. However, VR applications are usually adjusted to the individual tasks and not very flexible to use even in slightly changed paradigms. Our aim is the development and implementation of a VR paradigm library with some common VR scenes and a well-structured modular virtual environment system that allows the import of these virtual reality measurement paradigms just by few mouse clicks. For testing our approach, we used the system as a real time human brain interface where subjects navigated through a three-dimensional maze using brain activations of different cortical areas.