Neurohumanities Lab: Physiological Signal Analysis Within an Educational Partially Immersive Environment

Abstract

The use of immersive virtual reality technologies in education has demonstrated an improvement in the learning process of professional level students; nevertheless, mostly limited to the fields of science and engineering. In this study, the Neurohumanities Lab was introduced as a semi-immersive space where, differences in electroencephalography and heart rate as physiological signals, plus the statistical results from the ITC-SOPI presence questionnaire, were analyzed. These results were compared to those of a traditional class. Supervised Machine Learning algorithms were tested, and the engagement ratio plus the power extraction in the gamma band were the most significant features, with 92.34% accuracy on average. Heart rate variations were related to changes in the state of presence, also observed by the questionnaire responses’ results. Concluding that the Neurohumanities Lab has the potential to be a completely immersive environment, enhance the learning experience in the humanities area, and evaluate learning in an objective way.