Brainwave Analysis in Virtual Reality Based Emotional Regulation Training

Emotional regulation is how people manage their emotions especially anxiety, anger, and frustration, which are all negative emotions. It is critical to health, academic achievement, and work performance to have proper emotion regulation skills. In order to facilitate participants to manage emotions, we developed a series of training programs by using HTC© ViveTM headset and Neuracle. The HTC Vive is to improve immersion in presence to lead to more effective training, and the Neuracle is using Electroencephalography (EEG) techniques for reading user’s brainwave signals which provide real time input for the training programs. We focused on analyzing if emotion, which was reflected in brainwave signals, had changes when participants were exposed to positive/negative stimuli. The testing results indicated that there were noticeable changes in brainwave signals to stimuli. The findings from the testing provide a solid foundation to use brainwave signals as real-time input in our game development for improving emotion regulation skills in the future.