Virtual reality is where the future is headed in the gaming world with is both exciting and terrifying. For those of us gamers who have played Silent Hill or any of the Slender Man games, we may have met our match. Scientists have decided to start using this technology in some incredible ways, and one of those ways is using virtual reality to study CBD.
The reason it is can be a terrifying thought of playing a game in virtual reality is that you submerge yourself into a world in a way that video games haven’t, until now, been able to offer. When before you were controlling Batman from the comfort of your couch, now you can watch the water drip off the cave walls in the Bat Cave up close and in person.
Virtual Reality And Your Brain
Research has shown that when you enter a virtual world, your brain thinks you are actually there. When studying mice who were put into a virtual reality, they saw that the GPS neurons were activated creating a lay of the land. Scientists have used this idea of a completely interactive alternate reality to test the way CBD works with subjects.
Virtual Reality And CBD Study
In a study published just last Halloween, researchers took 32 volunteers that they specifically chose because of their high paranoia personality traits. The participants were randomly given either an oral dose of cannabidiol or a placebo before entering a virtual reality.
Going into this world and completely immersing themselves into this new-found reality had the participant's heart rate go up, cortisol levels increase, and their blood pressure was elevated. Unfortunately, they found that the cannabidiol given to the participants with high traits of paranoia did not help them during this time of being submerged in an alternate world contrary to past studies conducted. The researchers stated that they need a trial with a larger sample size for a definitive result.
What Does Our Future Look Like?
This is an exciting future for the studies of cannabis, giving scientists the ability to see the medication in action during more real-life experiences. They can’t follow their subjects around during their daily lives constantly measuring their vitals, but they can put their subjects in their own world and study them from the comfort of their laboratories. It will be exciting to see what type of accomplishments will come from further tests involving virtual reality.
