How Cyberpsychology and Virtual Reality Can Help Us to Overcome the Psychological Burden of Coronavirus

Living in the time of the coronavirus means experiencing not only a global health emergency but also extreme psychological stress that puts a strain on our identity and our relationships. The coronavirus forces us to manage three different psychological dilemmas simultaneously: the stress of the disease, the disappearance of places, and the crisis of the sense of community.

The first dilemma is evident. Coronavirus generates anxiety, for the potential risk that it causes for us and/or our loved ones. And this sense of risk is enhanced by the continuous flow of often conflicting information that reaches us through social networks. This situation activates in our brain the “attack-escape-freezing” reactions, a series of changes in the limbic and hormonal system that normally help us manage and successfully overcome possible threats.¹ However, in the case of coronavirus, the situation does not last for only a few minutes and is not easily manageable either with the attack or with the defense. The consequences are twofold. On the one hand, the hyperactivation of the hormonal system generates irritability and insomnia, as well as a continuous sense of anxiety and insecurity. On the other, if attack and escape do not work, the only alternative is the freezing that leads the subject to stop and wait, with significant effects on daily activities and the risk of spending the weeks sitting on the sofa waiting for a solution that never comes.

The second is less evident. In fact, one of the most significant but less obvious effects of quarantine is the disappearance of places from our daily experience. From a psychological point of view, a “place” is a closed space, a space delimited by borders, whereas “place attachment” is the cognitive-emotional bond to a meaningful space, a common phenomenon observed across cultures that produces significant psychological benefits.² As shown by neuroscientific research, which led May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser in 2014 to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine, within our brain there are different neurons—the “place cells” and the “border cells”—which are activated when we occupy a certain position in the environment and when we identify a border within it.³ What are these neurons for? Apparently, to manage our autobiographical memory, we define who we are through the memory of people and events that occurred within the different places we frequent. We are students because we go to school or university, we are workers because we go to the company, we are fans because we go to the stadium, and so on.

Quarantine is destroying our sense of place. On the one hand, we can no longer go to the places that characterized our daily life and made sense of our identity. On the other, even the home is no longer a place because it has stopped having boundaries for those who live there. Being able to have your own space to work or go to the bathroom becomes a challenge, especially when there are young children in a small apartment. Yet, without our spaces we lose both the sense of identity and our autobiographical memory. The days all seem the same and at the end of the day we feel empty and without fire.

The third is a direct consequence of the second. As psychosocial research has shown, communities are born in places, spaces delimited by borders.⁴ But if the places are no longer there, the sense of community also disappears. On the one hand, without the office, the workplace, the school, the pub, even the people we find inside them are more difficult to reach and the bonds weaken. On the other hand, even families who often have to live in spaces without borders stop being communities and become a group of individuals. The result is that the ability to share and accept one another diminishes, leading to an increase in conflict.

Being able to deal with these three dilemmas at the same time is not easy. However, positive technology⁵ can help us through the use of an innovative technology, virtual reality (VR).

VR is an advanced form of reality simulation that has many similarities with the functioning of the brain. As suggested by the “predictive coding” paradigm, the brain actively creates an internal model (simulation) of the body and the space around it, which it uses to make predictions about the expected sensory input and to minimize the number of prediction errors (or “surprise”). In this view, the VR experience tries to mimic the brain's model as much as possible—the more similar the VR model is to the brain model, the more the individual feels present in the VR world—making it the perfect tool for experiential learning.⁶

For a long time, the main barrier to a broad use of VR technology was its cost. However, now the simplest and cheapest form of VR comprises nothing but a pair of magnifying lenses and a sheet of cardboard or a plastic box. These headsets sell for 15–30 USD and use a standard smartphone as a tracker and display to generate the three-dimensional (3D) environment. Mobile-based VR is particularly suited to a specific VR content that can be very useful to address the coronavirus stress: 360-degree videos.⁷

These videos, also known as immersive videos or spherical videos, are special video recordings created using a camera with multiple camera lenses or a rig of multiple cameras. The use of different lenses allows the recording of every direction at the same time, effectively giving a full view of what is around the camera. One advantage of projecting a 360-degree video in a VR head-mounted display (HMD) is that when users turn their head, their view of the live-action video footage turns with them in real time, allowing the user to look around anywhere in the filmed footage.

360-Degree videos have the power to virtually transport users, immersing them in the video recording, allowing them to actively explore its content and experience the video from any angle. As recently demonstrated by Li et al.,⁷ these videos have the ability to induce specific emotions characterized by different levels of valence and arousal. More, as shown by Robertson and colleagues⁸ the neural representations of the part of the 360-degree video presented in VR (the scene within the current field of view) prime the associated representations of the full panoramic environment, facilitating subsequent perceptual judgments. In other words, 360-degree videos generate a dynamic interplay between memory and perception that can be used to improve the features of these cognitive processes and to update their contents.

To help our readers to discover the well-being potential of VR, we suggest the use of a freely available VR tool: “The Secret Garden.” It is a 10-minute 3D 360-degree video (4K resolution supported) that can be found here—https://www.covidfeelgood.com/—designed to combat stress and counter the disappearance of places and communities generated by the coronavirus.

Recently developed in Lombardy, the Italian region at the center of Italy's coronavirus outbreak by a group of Italian psychologists (https://become-hub.com/en/), it has been designed keeping in mind that providing psychological relief to so many (Lombardy population is >8 million inhabitants) over such a large geographical area would be complex. In fact, to experience it, any smartphone or tablet/PC will work. However, to fully experience the psychological benefits of being in a digital place, a cardboard headset is also necessary, including those sold for 15–30 USD in different digital marketplaces. The suggested use is the following: