Representing the human body within Virtual Reality Environments represents an area which is still unexplored. However, its powerful immersive capabilities highlight the potential for building exceptional experiences, or aiding the the human body via processes that are still being explored.

Starting from the previous studies which focused on representing the activity of the body internal processes (e.g., Monti et al. (2020)), and considering studies focused on other technologies (e.g., AR – Suzuki et al. (2013) the current work focuses on investigating the effects of representing the heart within a Virtual Environment over the Sense of Ownership, Interoceptive Sensitivity, as well as activity of the real heart. Three conditions are employed: (1) synchronized, (2) manipulated, and (3) random heart activities.

The study was conducted on 19 people, who took part in a within subject experiment, where each participant was exposed to all three conditions. The results suggest that the condition where the heart was synchronized yielded the highest scores for the SoE, while lowering the virtual heart rate leads to a reduction of the subject’s real heart rate.