Behavioral, Peripheral, and Central Neural Correlates of Augmented Reality Guidance of Manual Tasks

PubDate:Oct 2023

Teams: University of Pisa

Writers:Alejandro L. Callara; Gianluca Rho; Sara Condino; Vincenzo Ferrari; Enzo Pasquale Scilingo; Alberto Greco

PDF:Behavioral, Peripheral, and Central Neural Correlates of Augmented Reality Guidance of Manual Tasks

Abstract

Objective: The use of commercially available optical-see-through (OST) head-mounted displays (HMDs) in their own peripersonal space leads the user to experience two perception conflicts that deteriorate their performance in precision manual tasks: the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) and the focus rivalry. In this work, we aim characterizing for the first time the psychophysiological response associated with user's incorrect focus cues during the execution of an augmented reality (AR)-guided manual task with the Microsoft HoloLens OST-HMD. Methods: 21 subjects underwent to a “connecting-the-dots” experiment with and without the use of AR, and in both binocular and monocular conditions. For each condition, we quantified the changes in autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity of subjects by analyzing the electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate variability. Moreover, we analyzed the neural central correlates by means of power measures of brain activity and multivariate autoregressive measures of brain connectivity extracted from the electroencephalogram (EEG). Results: No statistically significant differences of ANS correlates were observed among tasks, although all EDA-related features varied between rest and task conditions. Conversely, significant differences among conditions were present in terms of EEG-power variations in the