Immersive Virtual Environment Laboratory

IVELAB

Embodied immersion in virtual reality

 

The aim of this project is to investigate and develop the method of creating correspondence between physical/performed actions and the visual virtual action presented inside the virtual environment. The interest is to have the best physical-virtual correspondence possible and moreover, to observe the effect that an inaccurate visual feed-back will have on the perception of immersion.

correspondence between a real and virtual hand

The people implied in this project are : Christian Van Brussel, Martin Edwards, Benoit Macq.
 

Spatial cognitionpicture of spatial planes

 

 

Research in the psy-naps and the numerical cognition groups work together to investigate how modified interactions in the virtual environment influence spatial cognition processes. Virtual reality provides an excellent experimental method for these investigations as we can manipulate the interaction between action capability, body representation and the environment. The investigations assess how these manipulations influence perception of distances and magnitudes, both between a virtual object and the virtual self, and between different virtual objects.

 

The people working on this thematic are : Martin Edwards, Mauro Pesenti, Stéphane Grade, Christian Van Brussel, Valerie Dormal.
 

Anxiety disorders and phobias

The research centre in psychological health and development (CSDP) has an ongoing research project that investigates the psychology of anxiety disorders. Within this project, the psychology of phobias is investigated and in a recent project, the fear of flying (aerophobia), where people are afraid and unable to travel in planes is being considered. The use of virtual reality provides a useful method for investigating phobias within a safe environment, and furthermore, allows for the use of other laboratory measures such as EEG that would normally be difficult to use in real environments where the phobic stimuli is present (for example, in an aeroplane). As well as developing the understanding of phobia cognition, the group is also interested in using virtual reality for the treatment of phobias and anxiety disorders.

The people working on this thematic are : Pierre Philippot and his group.

 

Social interactions in virtual reality

Information for this project will be posted soon.

The people implied in this project are : Vincent Yzerbyt and his research group.

 

Brain-computer interface and virtual reality

The aim of this project is to investigate the brain activity associated with executing actions, and to use the brain activity to operate virtual actions made by a virtual avatar in virtual reality. The project will work with participants that have impaired limb actions, either through stroke or through limb amputation, and aim to harness and develop brain action execution simulations as a means of treating psychological deficits that result from impaired body representations.

People working on this thematic are : Emanuele Pasqualotto and Martin Edwards.
 

Members

Martin Edwards

photo of martin

 

Professor Martin Edwards is the coordinator of the IVE Lab project and head of the Psy-NAPS group His research aim is to use the laboratory to study perception and action behaviour. He is also interested in developing new technology enabling interactive virtual environments, and in doing so, making the laboratory more useful for behavioural research

Professor,

Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education,

NeuroCSIPSY,
UCLouvain

Christian Van Brussel

Photo of Christian

 

Christian Van Brussel is currently doing his PhD on perception and action interactions in virtual environments, and is principally supervised by Professor Benoit Macq (secondary by Martin Edwards and Pierre Philippot). With his multiple skills in programming, he is a key person in the development of the laboratory. 

 

PhD student,

Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain,

ICTEAM, UCLouvain

Stéphane Grade

photo de stephane grade

 

Stéphane Grade is currently doing his PhD. His research investigates the involvement of motor and numerical processes in spatial cognition, supervised by Professors Martin Edwards and Mauro Pesenti. He is using the IVE lab to moderate the spatial aspects of virtual environments and measure the effects on action and numerical processes.

PhD,

Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education,

NeuroCSIPSY, UCLouvain 

 Emanuele Pasqualotto

photo Emmanuel

 

Emanuele Pasqualotto is a cognitive psychologist with a strong interest in human-computer interaction (HCI), assistive technology (AT) for disabled people, and brain-computer interfaces (BCI). He has joined the Psy-NAPS group of Prof. Martin Edwards and have integrated the IVE Lab in order to conduct experiments exploiting BCIs and virtual reality.

PhD

Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education,

NeuroCSIPSY, UCLouvain

 Mauro Pesenti

 Mauro Pesenti

 

Professor Mauro Pesenti is the head of the adult numerical cognition laboratory. His research aim within the IVE Lab is to investigate how adults behaviourally process magnitudes such as length, numerosity and distance, and what relationships exist between the different cognitions.  

Professor,

Research Associate, National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS, Belgium),

Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education,

NeuroCSIPSY,
UCLouvain

 Pierre Philippot

photo

 

Professor Pierre Philippot is the current president of the Psychological Sciences Research Institute (IPSY) and is a full member of the Psychological Health and Development Research Center (CSDP). He and his collaborators use the IVE Lab platform to investigate anxiety and phobia disorders (e.g., the fear of flying; aerophobia).

Professor

Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education,

CSDPIPSY,
UCLouvain

 Vincent Yzerbyt

Vincent Yzerbyt

 

Professor Vincent Yzerbyt is the Research Pro-Rector of the Université catholique de Louvain. He will use the IVE lab to create controlled scenarios to investigate his research interests are in social cognition, attribution, stereotyping and intergroup relations. 

 

Professor,

Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation,

CECoSIPSY, UCLouvain

 Benoît Macq

Benoit Macq

 

Professor Benoît Macq is the Service to Society Pro-Rector of the Université catholique de Louvain. He is involved in the development of the IVE lab and the use of new technology and techniques to create better quality immersion.