Audio-Visual Aid

From artificial sunlight and natural soundscapes to video conferencing and VR-based rehab, AV tech is steadily working to better our health and wellbeing

Words Katie Kasperson

Wellbeing is an essential aspect of our everyday lives. From daily habits such as eating a balanced diet, getting a good night’s sleep and taking care of our hygiene to more involved activities – including meditating, counselling and treating our health conditions – a commitment to wellness is ingrained in what we do.

In today’s digital world, technology is one of many available tools to boost wellbeing. From consumer products like smartwatches – which can track exercise minutes, heart rates and surrounding sound levels – to AI-based therapy apps, there’s hardly a limit on how technology can help us live happier, healthier and more well-rounded lives.

Wellbeing can be broken down into subcategories like positive emotions and optimism, life satisfaction and physical health; there are thousands of scientific studies linking these areas with sensory input. This is where audio-visual (AV) technology comes in. By stimulating the senses, AV is well-positioned to promote wellbeing. We explore the devices and experiences currently designed to achieve this.

Back to basics

Nature plays a critical role in preserving wellbeing, but our contemporary lives are at odds with our ancestors’. Instead of spending ample time outdoors and being physically active by default, we are forced into offices and apartment complexes – we go out of our way to exercise. While AV technology isn’t exactly a natural supplement, it does a decent job of mimicking sunlight and birdsong, which can counteract depression and promote calmness, even when digitised.

Circadian lighting – lighting which is designed to complement a person’s circadian rhythm or biological clock – is an emerging trend in both at-home and office environments. Regulating blood pressure, body temperature and melatonin production, our circadian rhythms respond to light and darkness. Unlike many animals, humans are not nocturnal, but artificial lighting can trick our bodies and throw off our rhythms (we have all likely heard that too much screen time before bed can produce poorer sleep, for instance).

Circadian lighting is meant to realign us with our natural rhythms by providing the optimal amount and type of light at specific times throughout the day. It supposedly improves sleep, reduces stress and enhances alertness – among numerous other benefits – leaving us more in sync with our bodies and brains.

Similarly, natural soundscapes – which place the listener into an environment such as a forest or the ocean – have also proven popular in regulating stress levels. During the Covid-19 pandemic – when life looked pretty bleak – many people noticed that nature seemed to be healing while industrial society took a back seat. People spent more time outdoors, heard birdsong returning to their once traffic-heavy cities and seemed to gain a new appreciation for the natural world.

Around the same time, the BBC worked with a research group at the University of Exeter on two projects: Forest 404 and Soundscapes for Wellbeing. These projects explored the relationships between music, natural soundscapes and listeners’ wellbeing, suggesting that adding natural sounds to a virtual environment could produce positive feelings and behaviours, and that this outcome is more likely when the soundscapes include birdsong and other animal noises.

Both studies also indicated that memory plays a key role in people’s responses to natural soundscapes. In other words, individuals who associated a soundscape with a memory of that physical environment were more likely to react positively to it. While the science suggests that digitised soundscapes can be beneficial, they cannot entirely replace exposure to the natural world (find out more at virtual-nature.com).

Staying well

With all this in mind, the AV industry can develop solutions better informed by research. By combining circadian lighting and virtual soundscapes with a myriad of other sensory stimulants, AV-based installations and specialised environments address and promote stress management, mindfulness and biological wellbeing.

Some companies are already doing this. Select MGM hotels, for example, offer Stay Well rooms which include ‘evidence-based wellness features’ – such as circadian bathroom lighting, a dawn simulator and immersive soundscapes – to reduce jet lag and promote relaxation.

Launched post-pandemic by Roe Visual founder Jason Lu, Cecoceco designs installations with its Artmorph wall panels. Made from natural elements, these high-resolution LED panels come in a range of textures, are easy to install and suit any environment – whether it’s a company lobby, a cultural space, a restaurant or a hotel room. Able to project virtually any image – such as ocean waves, birds in flight or flora and fauna, all featured as inspirations on the Cecoceco website – Artmorph panels are essentially unlimited in scope and undoubtedly capable of contributing to wellness by connecting us with the natural world.

All in this together

There’s a strong link between wellbeing and social attachment. As intrinsically community-orientated creatures, we rely on each other for support, and social isolation can lead to loneliness and poor mental health.

Accelerated by the pandemic, hybrid work and school are the new norm. Video calls have largely replaced the traditional face-to-face meetings, while emails and instant messages continue to prove efficient means of communication. However, video conferencing tools aren’t restricted to corporate and educational applications; they can also play a role in counselling and medicine. In several instances, a doctor-patient visit via video will suffice (this is sometimes referred to as telehealth), particularly if the appointment is a simple consultation. Similarly, counsellors and therapists can meet with their patients virtually and conduct sessions over video.

Just as remote work has its benefits, remote medicine does, too. For patients with limited mobility or means of transport, telehealth is especially useful. It also means that – depending on the capture area – patients have access to a wider net of medical professionals. Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Ringcentral and Doxy.me are just some of many software platforms which help make telehealth possible.

Low-risk rehab

Virtual reality (VR) takes remote healthcare even further. In cases of exposure therapy, for example, a patient is (safely) exposed to the source of their fear or anxiety until they overcome it. By adding VR to the equation, the exposure is more realistic – thus hopefully more impactful – but just as safe.

VR headsets have also been used in a variety of rehab scenarios. Virtual Rehab – a company that specialises in exactly this – offers ‘psychological rehabilitation for vulnerable populations’, according to its website, including those with a mental or neurological disorder such as depression, autism or substance use. Scientists have published several studies on VR, highlighting its ability to mimic life-like situations, thus tricking the brain – almost like a placebo effect.

Therefore, it is an effective tool (Virtual Rehab’s overall solution boasts an 88% efficacy rate) in pain management, prevention of relapse, enhancement of social skills and rehabilitation of repeat offenders.

Prisoners can struggle to reacclimatise to society after serving their sentence, and there’s often a relatively high risk of reincarceration in both the US and UK. VR can help prevent this through presenting prisoners with fictionalised scenarios where they can ‘play’ the victim, face tough choices, learn from mistakes and pick up valuable life skills.

While a virtual rehab offers several potential benefits, there are associated drawbacks and barriers – including practical considerations such as internet access, cost of the tech and data privacy, as well as the lack of emotional support normally provided by a clinician. For this reason, it’s recommended that virtual rehab serves as a treatment supplement rather than a full replacement.

No-brainer

While VR headsets certainly have a place in healthcare, other types of headsets – including those developed by Cognito Therapeutics – are entering the medical field. Cognito’s headset provides a non-invasive treatment for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

Developed by Cognito founders Ed Boyden and Li-Huei Tsai, the headset ‘delivers proprietary visual and auditory stimulation designed to preserve brain structure and function’ to adults with Alzheimer’s. By evoking gamma wave activity in the brain, the headset slows the progression of Alzheimer’s without any serious side effects. Individuals can wear the fitted headset anywhere at any time, so long as they do so for one hour each day.

The Cognito headset is tailored to its wearer, based on that patient’s tolerance for light and sound intensity. Through a series of clinical research studies, Cognito found that, after wearing the headset for six months, patients demonstrated a 77% and 76% reduction in the decline of daily function and cognitive function respectively, as well as a 69% decrease in brain volume loss. In other words, most headset wearers fared notably better than non-wearers, experiencing a less- intense cognitive decline and prolonging their ability to stay both mentally and physically alert.

It’s increasingly apparent that AV headsets are a crucial tool in preserving wellbeing – aiding those with common mental and physical health conditions, as well as those with more serious impairments. Cognito is currently amid its second study, Hope, which investigates the headset’s efficacy in specific cases of mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s. As scientists grow to better understand its inner workings, Cognito’s headset can potentially target and treat other cognitive conditions including Parkinson’s, epilepsy or amnesia.

Sit back, relax

Film is an obvious yet overlooked AV experience, as it tends to occupy a category of its own. Today, it is increasingly common to see relaxed screenings listed when browsing for cinema tickets. These are aimed at neurodiverse populations who may benefit from certain accessibility considerations like lower volume levels and dimmed lighting (instead of none), plus the freedom to speak and move around the theatre during the film.

The relaxed screenings provide neurodivergent individuals a chance to experience film as anyone else would, without the risk of overstimulation or chastisement from other audience members. While these screenings are often labelled as autism-friendly, they are also appropriate for other learning disabilities or neurological conditions like dementia or Tourette’s syndrome.

Besides relaxed screenings, descriptive subtitles and sign language translation can create a more inclusive experience for viewers. Unlike traditional subtitles, which translate dialogue, descriptive subtitles cover all audio elements from background music to other noises. These extra descriptions improve the viewing experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences and promote AV accessibility.

AI-based subtitling is becoming more widely used by video producers, with platforms often supporting various languages, saving time and effort on translation. That said, larger productions may employ subtitle authors to provide quality assurance and make sure the captions are as descriptive as possible (think Stranger Things Season 4). But for videos streamed in real time, machine-based subtitling will have to do. There are dozens of these generators on the market – Veed, Media.io and Flixier among them – that continuously refine the captioning process as AI becomes more powerful and less error-prone.

An obvious improvement

By now, it’s hopefully clear: AV tech is well-placed to bolster wellbeing. In the corporate world as well as in hospitality, circadian lighting, natural imagery and immersive soundscapes can leave us feeling more relaxed and connected to both our bodies and our environments. Meanwhile, video conferencing tools promote togetherness, a key ingredient in wellbeing and overall life satisfaction.

In a more medical sense, AV tech – and specifically VR – is a useful tool in rehabilitation because it can help individuals with neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders such as autism, depression and addiction. For those with neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, tailored headsets can ease symptoms and slow down cognitive degeneration. Finally, relaxed screenings and automated subtitles can support neurodivergent audiences, creating more equal entertainment experiences for all.

As AV tech continues to evolve, its ability to enhance wellbeing will surely do the same, improving our lives in ways we have yet to imagine.

This feature was first published in the Autumn 2024 issue of LIVE.