Visceral VR: Immersive Human Biology for the Study of Health and Disease

项目摘要/摘要：内脏VR 基本营养信息通常以乏味、抽象的文字和数字的形式出现在 食品标签--许多消费者忽视的标签。Lighthaus的内脏VR旨在为 通过利用虚拟现实(VR)的力量开创身临其境的交互式 向高中生教授营养学的方法。带着发自内心的，学生 可以跟随一顿饭从第一口吃到最后一口分子，通过消化系统 进入小肠，在那里他们可以将食物分解成分子营养物质进行探索 什么是“健康的”，什么不是--看看这些分子是否被输送到细胞用于 能量或储存为脂肪。本能让学生对这段关系有一个直观的理解 食物和健康之间的关系。 Lighthaus基于VR的沉浸式科学和健康课程旨在吸引学生 在令人兴奋的、变革性的体验中，挑战他们应用科学思想和 在虚拟现实的第一手实验的基础上发展理论的实践。我们相信这些 科学实践经验可以激励新一代学生追求职业生涯 科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)。 我们的项目将评估以科学为基础的VR课程是否能够激发学生对 STEM职业生涯，以及它对他们保持健康相关知识的影响 用于关键的终身饮食和营养决策。 我们将对高中理科学生进行一系列可用性和可行性研究， 随后进行了随机对照试验(RCT)，以检验学生使用内脏 会对学生的健康和生理内容知识、学生的态度产生影响 关于营养和饮食，以及学生作为科学家的STEM抱负和自我认知。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: VISCERAL VR Basic nutrition information often comes in the form of bland, abstract words and numbers on a food label – a label many consumers ignore. Lighthaus’s Visceral VR aims to bring nutrition to life by harnessing the power of virtual reality (VR) to pioneer an immersive, interactive approach to teaching the science of nutrition to high school students. With Visceral, students can follow a meal from the first bite to the last molecule, travelling through the digestive system into the small intestine, where they can break the food down into molecular nutrients to explore what’s “healthy” and what isn’t -- and see whether those molecules are delivered to cells for energy or stored as fat. Visceral gives students a gut-level understanding of the relationship between food and health. Lighthaus’s VR-based immersive science and health curricula are designed to engage students in exciting, transformative experiences that challenge them to apply scientific thought and practice to develop theories based on first-hand experimentation in in VR. We believe these embodied experiences in science can inspire a new generation of students to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Our project will evaluate science-based VR curriculum's ability to spark student interest in STEM careers, as well as the effect it has on their retention of health-related knowledge they can use for crucial lifelong diet and nutrition decisions. We will conduct a series of usability and feasibility studies with high school science students, followed by a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the hypothesis that student use of Visceral can have an effect on students’ health and physiology content knowledge, students’ attitudes towards nutrition and diet, and students’ STEM aspirations and self-perceptions as scientists.