Overview

• Seeing sick avatars in VR activates peripersonal space and salience networks to mobilize innate lymphoid cells and natural killer cells before any pathogen contact
• fMRI and dynamic causal modeling reveal that altered connectivity between multisensory brain regions and the hypothalamus drives immune activation via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
• Participants exposed to infectious avatars show an expanded peripersonal space effect, reacting faster to tactile stimuli at greater distances
• Ongoing trials will map immune cell dynamics in VR contexts and determine how long primed innate responses persist
• Researchers are exploring VR-based priming as a scalable strategy to boost vaccine efficacy and potentially desensitize allergies