The impact of digital scents on behavioral health in a restorative virtual reality environment

Astronauts on long-duration missions are at an increased risk of developing adverse behavioral conditions due to prolonged periods in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments. Sleep loss, sensory deprivation monotony, loss social connectedness can further exacerbate their decrement performance, thus jeopardizing mission success. Future will require crews travel distances that make current countermeasures increasingly difficult, as they rely proximity Earth. We have developed a multi-sensory virtual reality (VR) environment potential tool maintain the long-term health astronauts. conducted within-subjects study (N = 10) compare effectiveness our VR with without incorporation digital scents. Prior experience, subjects completed public speaking task elevate stress levels emulate stressful astronauts might encounter mission. The nature features small, forested area localized scents dispersed based user's location environment. For example, floral were emitted when user was near field flowers. Positive Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) 6-item State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-6) questionnaires administered record subjective data participant's state affect anxiety throughout experiment. Participants reported significantly lower STAI-6 scores after experience present than control condition (p 0.03). Compared stressed state, PANAS 0.003) 0.001) decreased condition. 0.013) also from baseline olfactory stimuli added. These results suggest addition aided reducing negative levels. In addition, indicate use multisensory environments promising countermeasure support during exploration missions.