Abstract-Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely applied in healthcare domain. Virtual Reality Mirror Therapy (VRMT) is one such clinical application for phantom limb pain management and post-stroke hemiparesis rehabilitation. However, the prevailing design of VRMT tasks typically follows the schema of traditional mirror therapy paradigm that prescribes strictly symmetric bilateral movements along the body's midline. While symmetry is not a requirement by the mirror neuron therapy where mirror therapies derive, this constraint imposes unnecessary limitations to both the development of diversified game-based rehabilitation tasks and portability of VR equipment and hardware. As a result, average patients using a conventional VR system may often find it difficult to perform certain exercises, such as arm abductions, or not possible to run a VRMT paradigm on affordable VR equipment for home-based rehabilitation. We therefore propose AsymmVRMT, an asymmetric strategy for mirrored affected limb mapping, and adopted it in our VRMT paradigm. We conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on post-stroke hemiparetic patients, and examined their clinical outcome measures (FM-UE, BI & WMFT) along with their user experience data (SUS & VEQ). Results showed that patients demonstrated stronger adaptability and more positive perceptions toward using the AsymmVRMT model, while the therapeutic outcomes were as good as those using conventional VRMT. AsymmVRMT therefore appears to be an effective alternative for human-computer interaction in VR that may offer higher flexibility and diversity to address the hardware-related constraints in rehabilitation system development, facilitating convenient VR-based rehabilitation for patients, both at the hospital and at home.

DIS ’25, Funchal, Portugal

Underlying humanity’s social abilities is the brain’s capacity to interpersonally synchronize. Experimental, lab-based neuropsychological studies have demonstrated that inter-brain synchrony can be technologically mediated. However, knowledge in deploying these technologies in-the-wild and studying their user experience, an area HCI excels in, is lacking. With advances in mobile brain sensing and stimulation, we identify an opportunity for HCI to investigate the in-the-wild augmentation of inter-brain synchrony. We designed “PsiNet,” the first wearable brain-to-brain system aimed at augmenting inter-brain synchrony in-the-wild. Participant interviews illustrated three themes that describe the user experience of modulated inter-brain synchrony: hyper-awareness; relational interaction; and the dissolution of self. We contribute these three themes to assist HCI theorists’ discussions of inter-brain synchrony experiences. We also present three practical design tactics for HCI practitioners designing inter-brain synchrony, and hope that our work guides a HCI future of brain-to-brain experiences which fosters human connection.