Group VR experiences can produce ego attenuation and connectedness comparable to psychedelics

This paper (2022) introduces “Isness-distributed” (Isness-D), a VR framework which harnesses the unique affordances of distributed multi-person VR to blur conventional self-other boundaries. To evaluate Isness-D,  the results of 4 different self-report scales previously applied to analyze subjective psychedelic drug phenomenology were analysed. Across all four scales, the Isness-D scores were statistically indistinguishable from recently published studies with psychedelic drugs highlighting the power of VR to develop self-transcendent experiences.

Abstract

“With a growing body of research highlighting the therapeutic potential of experiential phenomenology which diminishes egoic identity and increases one’s sense of connectedness, there is significant interest in how to elicit such ‘self-transcendent experiences’ (STEs) in laboratory contexts. Psychedelic drugs (YDs) have proven particularly effective in this respect, producing subjective phenomenology which reliably elicits intense STEs. With virtual reality (VR) emerging as a powerful tool for constructing new perceptual environments, we describe a VR framework called ‘Isness-distributed’ (Isness-D) which harnesses the unique affordances of distributed multi-person VR to blur conventional self-other boundaries. Within Isness-D, groups of participants co-habit a shared virtual space, collectively experiencing their bodies as luminous energetic essences with diffuse spatial boundaries. It enables moments of ‘energetic coalescence’, a new class of embodied intersubjective experience where bodies can fluidly merge, enabling participants to include multiple others within their self-representation. To evaluate Isness-D, we adopted a citizen science approach, coordinating an international network of Isness-D ‘nodes’. We analyzed the results (N = 58) using 4 different self-report scales previously applied to analyze subjective YD phenomenology (the inclusion of community in self scale, ego-dissolution inventory, communitas scale, and the MEQ30 mystical experience questionnaire). Despite the complexities associated with a distributed experiment like this, the Isness-D scores on all 4 scales were statistically indistinguishable from recently published YD studies, demonstrating that distributed VR can be used to design intersubjective STEs where people dissolve their sense of self in the connection to others.”

Authors: David R. Glowacki, Rhoslyn R. Williams, Mark D. Wonnacott, Olivia M. Maynard, Rachel Freire, James E. Pike, Mike Chatziapostolou

Notes

This paper builds on previously published work on “Isness.”

We had the chance to catch up with the paper’s lead author David Glowacki. Check out the interview here.

Summary

Self-transcendent experiences (STEs) are described in a variety of different knowledge domains and involve the dissolution of boundaries between the sense of self and ‘other’. They are often accompanied by profound insights and are often described in terms of a sense of unity with other beings and other objects.

Different classes of STEs have varying intensities, with a sense of ‘losing oneself’ whilst reading a book or writing computer code representing a relatively weak STE, whereas a spiritual ‘God-encounter’ experience represents a considerably more intense form of STE.

William James suggested that particularly intense classes of STEs, namely ‘mystical type experiences’, can have lasting positive, transformative, and life-changing effects. Recent studies have shown that psychedelic drugs can produce subjective phenomenology similar to non-drug MTEs. Despite their potential, YDs face a number of practical challenges, including the need for extensive psychotherapy support and the need to determine a YD dose that reliably elicits therapeutic effects but minimizes the aforementioned risks.

Given the challenges associated with YD administration, there has been emerging research exploring non-drug technologies for reliably eliciting STEs. Isness-C, a multi-person VR experience, offers a case study demonstrating that multi-person VR can be used to design group experiences that create the conditions for intense STEs.

To distinguish Isness-C from psychedelic technologies, Glowacki et al. coined the term numadelic, which may be translated as ‘spirit-manifesting’ or ‘spirit-revealing’.

While Isness-C was the first study to use the MEQ30 to analyse subjective participant experience in a VR context, previous work has suggested that immersive 360 videos can induce altered visual perception and a sense of awe. Several studies have shown that awe can be reliably elicited by presenting individuals with video content of various environments, and that VR can elicit a stronger sense of awe compared to standard 2d videos.

The two primary ingredients of STEs are a weakened sense of self-boundaries and diminished self-salience, and a ‘relational’ sense of unity with something beyond the self. These ingredients are best realized in a multi-body, relational context.

Present work

In this paper we describe a multi-person cloud-mounted VR experience called Isness-distributed (Isness-D), which blurs conventional boundaries between self and other. The body boundaries are diffuse, fuzzy, and soft, making it difficult to specify clearly where one body ends and another begins.

Figure 2 shows a co-located version of Isness, and a distributed version of Isness, both of which produce similar MEQ30 scores.

Modern physics emphasizes that objects have wave-like energetic essences and behaviors, and that matter is highly packed energy, transformable into other types of energy, and therefore something in the nature of a process.

The embodied experience of energetic overlap, illustrated in Fig. 3A,B, is only possible within a multi-person distributed VR environment, and may represent a particularly explicit form of ‘identity fusion’, which dissolves the norms that typically characterize relationships within structured institutional contexts.

Figure 3 shows 4 participants + 1 facilitator joining Isness from various ‘nodes’ distributed across the world. The Isness server was mounted on data centers in London, Frankfurt and Washington D.C.

Isness-D is a group VR experience in which participants experience the emergence, dissipation, and fluctuation of their own bodies and a simulated molecular ‘organism’. The software used to run Isness grew out of a multi-person room-scale VR framework. People interacting with the simulations report feeling differences in the simulated dynamical flexibility of different molecular objects, which highlights a crucial affordance of VR: a modality that enables a tangible sensory experience of touching phenomena whose essences are purely energetic. The presence of a molecular object whose dynamics were simulated in real-time was an important intersubjective aspect of Isness-D. This molecular organism represented a kind of tangible, fluctuating organism with a purely energetic essence, inviting participants to recognize that their own essential energetic quality is shared with every other object in the natural world.

Given that our laboratory was shut down as a result of COVID restrictions, we evaluated Isness-D using a ‘citizen science’ approach, coordinating a set of 14 “Isness-nodes” distributed across the world. We used the MEQ30 to assess the intensity of the unitive experience, and three additional measurement scales to assess ego dissolution and ego inflation. We used the psychedelic communitas scale to measure the extent of ‘communitas’ experienced during intersubjective group YD experiences, which was associated with improvements in psychological well-being, depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, and interpersonal tolerance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created conditions for increased social isolation and loneliness, which are correlated with feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, depressive thoughts, and helplessness. Isness-D offers participants new experiences of connectedness, which may help address the isolation resulting from COVID.

Results

A total of 109 participants participated in 29 Isness sessions, of which 54 answered the pre-session questionnaire and 58 answered the post-session questionnaire. The participants’ ages ranged from 23 to 75 years old, and 59% were male, 37% were female, and 2% declined to state. One participant reported a brief period of nausea, three reported body aches and three reported headaches. Six participants reported crying at some point during their Isness-D experience.

The MEQ3027 asks participants to rate the intensity with which they experienced 30 items on a 6-point scale. It captures ineffability, mystical experiences, positive mood, and transcendence of time/space. Figure 4 compares the Isness-D MEQ30 factor scores to 27 previous studies using independent sample t-tests with a significance level of 5%. The results show that Isness-D is statistically indistinguishable from 26 other studies on each of its I, M, P or T factor scores.

Figure 4 shows the average factor scores of Isness-D compared to Isness-C25 and previously published research studies that have employed the MEQ30. Isness-D has a factor score of 0.8, which is statistically indistinguishable from Isness-C25 on at least 2 factors.

3 studies were more intense on all 4 factors, 6 studies were more intense on 2 factors, 7 studies were equal in intensity, 3 studies were indistinguishable on all 4 factors, and 4 studies were indistinguishable on three factors.

Griffiths and co-workers identified 29% of Isness-D participants as having had a complete MTE, compared to 44% of Isness-C participants.

Participants’ ICS scores increased significantly following Isness-D, with a mean score of 1.2 1.4 (SD) pre-Isness-D increasing to 2.9 1.4 (SD) post-Isness-D. These results are statistically indistinguishable from those found in a recent study of 450 participants who used hallucinogens and/or euphorics in the last week.

Figure 5 shows the ICS scale shown to participants in the pre-Isness-D and post-Isness-D questionnaires, and the histograms of the ICS scores for all participants.

The EDI84 self-report scale is typically employed in psychedelic studies to measure subjective experiences of ego dissolution and ego inflation. The results show that the ego inflation distributions are shifted to lower values compared to the ego dissolution distributions. Direct comparison of the complete Isness-D EDI scores to previous YD studies is complicated because several previous studies use only a single EDI item to measure ego dissolution, and because participants were placed in an fMRI57,58 or PET scanner59, which may lead to anxiety and impact the reported scores85. Madsen et al.59 found that the ego dissolution after psilocybin was similar to or lower than Isness-D, and Mason et al.60 found that the ego dissolution after psilocybin was lower than Isness-D.

A correlation plot of each participant’s average post-Isness-D ego dissolution score against their corresponding post-Isness-D ICS score indicated a positive correlation. The Pearson correlation coefficient similarly indicated a positive correlation.

Kettner et al.61 used a scale to assess participants’ Isness-D experiences, and found that the mean reported total communitas was higher than the midpoint scale value (p 0.001), indicating that a sense of togetherness was felt by participants during their shared Isness-D sessions.

Figure 6 shows that the average ego inflation and ego dissolution scores were similar across participants, and that the average ego dissolution score was correlated with the post-Isness-D ICS scores.

The qualitative analysis of Isness-D is based on three sources: (1) semi-structured group discussion in VR during phase 3; (2) optional free writing upon exiting VR; and (3) a post-Isness-D questionnaire. The analysis was conducted using an inductive thematic analysis86.

Discussion

Our results suggest that the phenomenological intensity of STEs arose for participants during Isness-D is comparable to YDs, in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. For example, participants’ average ICS score of 2.9 1.4 (SD) is statistically indistinguishable from a large-scale naturalistic study investigating YD effects for more than 450 participants. The qualitative analysis indicates that Isness-D is similar to psychedelics, and that participants experienced a sense of interconnectedness and emotional impact similar to YD experiences. Isness-D offers a case study for how careful human computer interaction (HCI) design can ground emergent spiritual concepts in rigorous physics insights.

Earlier in this article we highlighted two ingredients important in STEs: diminished self-salience and a sense of unity with something beyond the self. These ingredients are best realized in a multi-body context. One participant succinctly articulated how they experienced the relational co-dependence between connectedness and diminished egoic identity during Isness-D: “you lose yourself in the connection to other people”. This sense of connectedness was accompanied by a sense of joy, purity, love, and beauty. Yaden et al.5 argue that self-loss is often associated with positive outcomes, and our results support this view.

For the MEQ30, Isness-D and Isness-C results were statistically indistinguishable, but Isness-D scores were lower than Isness-C for the M and P factors. This was because we had less control over participant’s set and setting prior to entering VR and after leaving VR. The results of this citizen science study were obtained using a broader distribution of international participants, and were effectively an adaptation of an experience that was originally designed to be co-located.

Isness-D differs from conventional YD psychotherapy in several ways, including the fact that the phase 1 preparation lasted 15 min, the three phases last a total of 70 min, and the experience was designed as a group experience. Compared to previous studies, the N = 58 Isness-D sample size is reasonable; however, this study had a number of limitations and therefore some of our analyses are primarily comparative. The MEQ30 results from this work are more intense than all previous studies, but are within the range spanned by 6 previously published baseline studies. Nevertheless, the results described herein provide a degree of confidence in the results obtained in our previous study. The design of Isness-D as a group experience suggests that the individual data may be correlated. Further studies are needed to investigate the correlation of the results obtained for participants within specific groups, and compare intra-group results to inter-group results.

Conclusions

The aim of this work was to determine whether multi-person distributed VR could be used to reliably elicit intense STEs. We developed an experience called Isness-D that allows participants to imagine themselves, others, and the world around them.

Isness-D is a network of nodes distributed around the world that enables participants to experience moments of energetic coalescence, a new class of embodied intersubjective experience. Participants report feeling connected to others and experiencing a sense of intimacy, innocence, playfulness, and purity. A distributed multi-person VR experience called Isness-D can be used to elicit intersubjective STEs, which can attenuate egoic identity and facilitate a sense of connectedness. This experience may have a role to play in easing unprecedented feelings of loneliness, isolation, and fear.

Ethics approval was obtained from the Faculty of Science Research Ethics Committee at the University of Bristol, and participants provided informed consent before signing up to an Isness-D session.

Isness-D is a VR experience that uses a GPU to calculate the dynamics of a 40-Alanine peptide macrocycle. It can accommodate 4 – 5 participants wearing either the HTC Vive Pro or Valve Index HMD. Participants in Isness-D were fitted with the Open Mudra Gloves for Virtual Reality (OMG-VRs), which sensed when they pinch their thumb and index finger, or thumb and middle finger to form a “mudra” position. The OMG-VRs were used to generate light and collectively sculpt the dynamics of the tangible molecular object.

Methods

Isness nodes were distributed across the world and equipped with VR-capable computers, HTC Vive Pro or Valve Index HMDs, a single pair of OMG-VRs, and a reliable internet connection. They were managed by ‘hosts’ who were given guidance on how to prepare participants.

Participants were recruited by the node hosts and were given a link to a web scheduler. They had to read the online study information sheet and complete a tick box consent form before registering for an Isness-D time slot. We used the survey platform Qualtrics to administer the pre-Isness-D questionnaire and the post-Isness-D questionnaire. We modified the pre-Isness-D questionnaire to remove questions about suffering and surrendering, and added a final comments section to the post-Isness-D questionnaire.

Isness-D was designed as a 3-phase journey, with a preparatory/induction phase, an Isness-D session, and an integration/reflection phase. Observers were invisible to participants and facilitators, and helped stabilize the Isness-D experience by observing first-hand without affecting the participant experience.

Isness-D was constructed from 69 different aesthetic hyperparameters, which were varied using an available set of on-screen sliders. Each phase of Isness-D involved two audio components: a communication channel with the other participants in the space, and a pre-recorded narrative soundtrack.

The node hosts connected to the cloud mounted Isness server, connected to an audio-only zoom call, and connected to the Twitch feed prior to any participants entering the Isness-D virtual environment. They performed several checks, including interaction latency, OMG-VR check, audio check, and spatial orientation check.

We found that Isness-D offered a fluid and stable experience so long as the internet connection at each node was stable. This was achieved by encouraging nodes to evaluate their network stability using a simple online test93, and undertake optimization where possible.

Phase 1: preparation. After fitting the participants with the HMDs and OMG-VRs, the facilitator initiated the Isness-D state sequence and Twitch audio stream, and asked them to introduce themselves and say how they were feeling. The facilitator invited each participant to stand up and participate in some gentle movement exercises, and then encouraged them to gradually move toward the center of the virtual space until they all overlapped.

The facilitator invited the participants to create a molecular thread using their OMG-VRs, and to imagine it as a kind of tangible dynamical organism that could connect their energetic essences across different physical locations and time zones.

Phase 2: A loosely guided choreography. Participants were guided through 16 states, each composed from a different combination of aesthetic hyperparameters, by a narrator who kept watch over the virtual space and gently reminded participants who became particularly excited to move gently, carefully and fluidly.

The facilitator re-emerged from spectate mode, made themselves visible to the Isness participants, and encouraged all of them to hold onto the energetic molecular organism. They then led 10 min of group discussions, in which they were an active listener and enabled maximum conversation amongst the participants. After the discussion, participants were instructed to gently exit VR, lie down, let the light and sound in the ambient environment seep back into their conscious awareness, and open their eyes when they were ready.

Author contributions

D.R.G. led the project, conceived the idea, organized and supervised the team, wrote the original draft, codesigned the Isness-D experience, guided the software design, obtained funding, and helped make figures.

Funding

This project has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Axencia Galega de Innovacion, the European Union, the Royal Society, and the non-profit ArtSci International Foundation. We would like to thank the network of Isness participants, node hosts, and citizen science volunteers around the world for their help with this project. The VR software used to run Isness has been developed and maintained by the Intangible Realities Laboratory.

Additional information

The images in this article are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.