AR/VR Study

The sense of agency (SoA) is a fundamental aspect of human self-consciousness that allows us to make judgements about whether we did something ourselves or not. A disturbed SoA was often found in patients with FND. Additionally, patients with FND show a mechanism of increased self-monitoring – i.e., FND patients focus more on their affected limbs than their environment. Thus, FND patients experience a constant “nocebo” effect. This increased attention may maintain the patient’s expectation that they cannot control their body, which in turn maintains poor motor performance.

In the ARVR study, we explore the SoA and self-monitoring in FND patients within a Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) environment implementing video-eye-oculography. This study will shed light on the visual focus of attention of FND patients during a cognitive motor task in relation to their motor symptoms.