Festival goers will be able to try virtual reality (VR) nature experiences that researchers say can help with mental health and pain relief.<\/p>\n
Dr Sam Hughes of the University of Exeter is to exhibit the benefits of nature though VR, art, sound and film at Glastonbury Festival later this month.<\/p>\n
The director of Exeter Pain Lab said immersing people in nature can reduce the amount of pain they feel and VR made nature accessible to those with mobility issues.<\/p>\n
Dr Hughes said the festival was “a great way to showcase the ability to use VR to deliver nature and its benefits to people from the comfort of their own homes”.<\/p>\n
He said the VR headsets would immerse festival goers in environments including forests, mountains and lakes.<\/p>\n
He said: “Pain is inherently a psychological construct.<\/p>\n
“If we can immerse people in nature what we’ve found is that this can actually reduce the amount of pain people experience.”<\/p>\n
While “real nature is always going to be the gold standard”, he added, VR can deliver “some of these beneficial therapeutic effects of nature at home”.<\/p>\n
The immersive experience is part of Brainwaves and Birdsong, a public engagement initiative by a team of scientists, mural artists, music composers and wildlife documentary makers.<\/p>\n
The project is funded through the Chronic Pain Neurotechnology Network.<\/p>\n
Glastonbury Festival is set to run from 25 to 29 June at Worthy Farm in Somerset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Festival goers will be able to try virtual reality (VR) nature experiences that researchers say can help with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3162],"tags":[53,16,15,3243,3244],"class_list":{"0":"post-208150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-virtual-reality","12":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114733736455808107","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}