2022/2023 Contextual and Theoretical studies 2

My research started by assuming that Full-Dive virtual reality technology is becoming the future of media communication methods. And, therefore, the virtual communication factors used (e.g. user experience design, user interaction design, graphic design) are closely linked to user engagement and experience, and somehow, influence their actions and thoughts.

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The story raises many questions, still relevant today, about the impact of digital media and related technology on our brains. This issue of Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience explores in a multifaceted manner how, by what means, and with what possible effects digital media use affects brain function—for the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of human existence.


What remains to be determined is whether the increasing frequency of all users moving toward being knowledge distributors themselves might become a great threat to the acquisition of solid knowledge and the need that each has to develop their own thoughts and to be creative. Or will these new technologies build the perfect bridge to ever more sophisticated forms of cognition and imagination, enabling us to explore new knowledge frontiers that we cannot at the moment even imagine? Will we develop completely different brain circuit arrangements, like we did when humans started to learn to read? Taken together, even if much research is still needed to judge and evaluate possible effects of digital media on human well-being, neuroscience can be of tremendous help to distinguish causal effects from mere correlations.


Korte, M. (2020). The impact of the digital revolution
on human brain and behavior: where
do we stand? Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 22(2), 101-111. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.2/mkorte

Martin’s research perfectly shows how digital languages could have positive or negative effects on the human brain and how knowledge could be absorbed by the brain being related to how they been conveyed, thus, digital designs are taking an essential role in developing human brains.

His research for this part is mainly based on the digital media industry like social media SNS and the reading parts, this image shown was his figure to compare human brain activities when they are reading through different media, e.g. physical books, on screens, e-books and on the web pages.

Although his citation asserts that the negative effects of visual games on the human brain cannot be ignored, his research methods and theory provide a good direction for my claims to develop. He perfectly proved that people’s exposure to and use of language and visual information transmission media can directly affect the results of media reception, and this influence will continue to increase with the degree of authenticity of the media and design concepts. People’s reactions to two-dimensional design are certain To some extent, it reflects the future response to the three-dimensional world.

Therefore, my research was pushed to the next stage — how could the difference between the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional environment act as a working, studying and living tool for human life.

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Video game technology is changing from 2D to 3D and virtual reality (VR) graphics. In this research, we analyze how an identical video game that is either played in a 2D, stereoscopic 3D or Head-Mounted-Display (HMD) VR version is experienced by the players, and how brands that are placed in the video game are affected. The game related variables, which are analyzed, are presence, attitude towards the video game and arousal while playing the video game. Brand placement related variables are attitude towards the placed brands and memory (recall and recognition) for the placed brands. 237 players took part in the main study and played a jump’n’run game consisting of three levels. Results indicate that presence was higher in the HMD VR than in the stereoscopic 3D than in the 2D video game, but neither arousal nor attitude towards the video game differed. Memory for the placed brands was lower in the HMD VR than in the stereoscopic 3D than in the 2D video game, whereas attitudes towards the brands were not affected. A post hoc study (n = 53) shows that cognitive load was highest in the VR game, and lowest in the 3D game. Subjects reported higher levels of dizziness and motion-sickness in the VR game than in the 3D and in the 2D game. Limitations are addressed and implications for researchers, marketers and video game developers are outlined.

The findings of our study are relevant for game developers, marketers and researchers. This study contributes to research and theory in various ways, since it empirically examines the evaluation of video games and the brand placements within the games, by directly comparing players’ reactions to a 2D, stereoscopic 3D and Head-Mounted Display VR video game. Our results indicate that 3D and VR lead to higher presence, i.e. to a pronounced feeling of “being in the game”, but game evaluation did not differ between the 2D, 3D, and VR version. This is an important finding, because it shows that an enhancement in technology to 3D or VR does not necessarily lead to a better game evaluation. The additional depth perception in the 3D environments and the increased presence lead to a higher cognitive load and also come along with negative aspects such as dizziness and eye fatigue that probably impair video game evaluation. Subjects who played the VR game in particular reported higher levels of dizziness and motion-sickness while playing the game. Hence, the fact that video game evaluation was not worse in the 2D condition as compared to the 3D and VR condition indicates that game developers can still be quite successful by continuing to offer “traditional” 2D video games. Game developers of 3D or VR video games need to be aware that the 3D and VR experiences can come along with negative feelings that could possibly harm game evaluation, so they need to develop video games in which the advantages of 3D or VR use clearly outweigh these associated disadvantages.

Roettl, J., & Terlutter, R. (2018). The same video game in 2D, 3D or virtual reality – How does technology impact game evaluation and brand placements? PLOS ONE, 13(7), e0200724. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200724

According to the abstract and the H1 hypothesis given by this research, Roettl and Terlutter assert that in point of the video games and visual environments, virtual reality is performing the best compared to 2D and 3D conditions, and it will be the best way to present brand concepts in ignoring the negative physical feelings. This also supports my assumption of human increases visual sensory system acuity with the development of immersive experiences, as people’s

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Artistic practice is an indispensible tool for strengthening imaginative consciousness and developing creativity, awareness, understanding, and visual knowledge. However, Winner et al. (2013) concluded that integrating the arts improves academic performance and makes children more innovative thinkers has not yet been proven. Winner and Cooper’s (2010) findings failed to support the view that creativity is causing academic achievement. Although it has been speculated that creativity and innovation cannot be translated into better general academic achievement based on scores on the kind of tests that children now take in school, it has been stressed on the educational value of learning as a process matter, “to know and understand”, such improvement function is due to the effect of visual art experience students received. Undoubtedly, technologies integration would give a vital means of reaching students in and through the arts as investigative methods.

Sylvia Stavridi, Special Libraries Directorate, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, (2015). The Role of Interactive Visual Art Learning in Development of Young Children’s Creativity, Vol.06 No.21(2015), Article ID:61827,9 pages, https://www.scirp.org/html/5-6302786_61827.htm?pagespeed=noscript

This research article mainly describes the results of a study on the development of visual arts and children’s creativity and process. For children and students in the best condition, visual design can help teachers and children’s future development and achieve effective results at the educational level.

After considerable debate on creativity, contemporary approach to creativity research has adopted a definition that creativity is the human process leading to novel ideas (Mishra & Singh, 2010) , whereas creative thinking “innovative” encompasses the acts: to inquire, explore, imagine the outcome, take risks, reflect, and innovate and focuses upon the nature of the interaction between the human and medium rather than upon outcomes (Ross, 1985; Erik et al., 2011 ). Hence, artful educator and teacher should pay great regard on the thinking process and how to engage younger students emotionally, intellectually, and not to settle with one perspective to nourish their natural creativity and adaptability. Ross (1985) identified flexibility as a creative process, and the feature of a creative act is the absence of any rules so children can constantly explore utilizing a particular range of artistic methods, and move freely between making and receiving (maker & receiver). This in turn enables him to visualize a range of further possibilities within a work in term of another subject area. Abbs believes that when a child feels comfortable making mistakes, and is encouraged to go beyond the context of the formal approaches he has learned, will be genuinely empowered to aesthetically recognize vital links and connections in each aspect. In other words, a child is more likely to learn to notice the discovery in science or simple geometrical nature in mathematics, and to be creative in making a discovery and shaping meaning into expressive and comprehensible forms, when he enjoys the learning process, and is thrilled to know and understand such a thing cannot be a formal thing with rules. In conclusion, creativity is whenever imagination and divergent thinking come first, the ability to reconstruct reality (Wilson, 2014; Wilson & Myhill, 2013) , a process that vitally includes creating originality, not just a copy of the original, but more like mentally envisioning the formation of images which can then guide actions and problem solving.

This article puts an important punctuation mark on my conception, and it does a good job of summarizing the content and results of the previous two articles and integrating them into a piece of evidence that I can use in my argument. Because the experiment with young children who are most suitable for learning and absorbing knowledge cannot well reflect the response of all the people I imagined to visual stimulation and learning. Although a single experimental group will have great limitations as a disadvantage, I believe that It is believed that children in the educational stage will undoubtedly be the decisive factor when looking at future development from the perspective of development and creation and innovation.

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A book published by the Salzburg global seminar found in the National Endowment of the arts records the best researches work on how people innovate and create something new with our brains, which could perfectly support my project and push it to the next stage.

For more than a decade, Arne Dietrich, a psychology professor at
American University of Beirut, has worked to demolish existing
ideas about creativity. According to Dietrich, we still have no
understanding of how the brain generates new ideas, despite a tidal
wave of neuroscientific research. Nevertheless, he loves to study
creativity, which might be the most distinctive feature of the human
species. Dietrich is calling for a new start in the search for creativity,
and he is hunting for mechanisms – as opposed to locations – in the
brain. He criticized recent fMRI results, arguing that scientists have
confused location for mechanism, which he compared to phrenology.
He suspects that creativity is a distributed network, throughout
different areas of the brain – a sort of “brain vaudeville” with screens
happening at many locations at the same time. Furthermore, there
is no real demarcation between creativity and non-creativity, which
prevents there from being a true experimental control group. For a
neurocognitive framework, Dietrich offered a distinction between
two systems in the brain: the explicit and implicit. In his opinion, the
implicit system, unconscious, experiential, and “not verbalizable,” is
responsible for what is called the “flow state”, colloquially known as
“the zone.” He laid out theory of transient hypofrontality, meaning
the lessening of activity in the explicit system, which associated with
higher cognitive functions.

https://www.salzburgglobal.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Documents/2010-2019/2015/Session_547/SalzburgGlobal_Report_547_FINAL_lo_res.pdf

Award-winning filmmaker Noah Hutton is the founder of The Beautiful
Brain, an online magazine dedicated to art and neuroscience. He
has been active in the field of neuroaesthetics, speaking at a Venice
Biennale symposium and curating an exhibition at the Human
Brain Mapping Conference. Last year, Hutton won a commission
from the Times Square Art Alliance for a creative project involving
brain images. For the month of November, every night at midnight,
many advertising screens around one of the busiest places in the
world showed a video of virtual brain maps, created by four leading
international research teams. Hutton sees a mimetic relationship
between the brain and the external world, but he has noticed that
art is not really represented in neuroaesthetics books, which seem
to cite artworks only as the means to an end, explaining brain
processing. Hutton called for a bold new theoretical approach, which
he called “the Apollo 13 Theory,” after the 1995 American docudrama
starring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, and Ed
Harris, directed by Ron Howard. The Apollo 13 Theory encourages
intellectual travelers to fuel up on art, gathering aesthetic and visual
examples, heading toward the moon of the brain to learn about
neuroscience mechanisms, but sling-shotting around the moon,
ending up back home in art, only now with the knowledge from the
journey. Neuroscience is not necessarily the end domain; artistic
creation can be the mission control as well.

After reading through the book, Arne Dietrich and Noah Hutton conveyed important information and research results to me in this book:

The concept of virtuality and simulation is actually a perfect tool to guide the further development of human beings. This concept is extended by the underlying inactive part of the human brain. One of the sources of this inactivity may be the limitations of the real world caused lack of imagination.

In this way, the formation of arts applied in visual languages that are taking a significant weight in communicating with humans and somehow, influencing their worldview will doubtlessly become a unique and most valid way of expression.

This is not going to be the discussion on how visuals and arts will work on educating (sth discovered by ancestors that people need to know) but the unknown field which cannot be imagined with existing pieces of knowledge, something beyond reality and makes cognition to the next level. This will be supported by studies on the “Activated and Deactivated functional brain area” and even “Metabolic underpinnings of activated and deactivated cortical areas in the human brain” corresponding to the application of visual expression on stimulating hidden potentials.

In this topic, it could be developed into a more experimental discussion about wether the full dive technology or the ‘perfect’ virtual reality environment will be invented in the upcoming future and how it will affect the world in aspects of financial, arts, and people’s day-to-day life. This will be a field worth exploring and also a future imagination that attracts much attention, because it not only includes the research on the configuration of hardware and computer facilities but also touches people’s inner desire to explore and create the unknown.

According to the research shown before and the concept decided, I created an essay structure in form of a mind map to clarify the development of the whole essay and discussion with my opinion.

This is the first version of my essay structure mind map, and it is simply divided into three parts researching the background and one big part discussing on my assumption and how it develops according to the three researching parts. And the essay will start with an introduction and end with a conclusion that includes the result of the researches and assumption processes.

Although not being able to personally design experiments and conduct demonstrations will be the biggest shortcoming of my article, the existing articles and experimental conclusions are enough to help me discuss the possibility and limitations of my point of view, and what I have done The most important thing is to finally push the argumentation to a happy ending through reading and integrating resources. The three research areas I have chosen are all well-tested, including explorations and hypotheses about the human brain in the field of biology.