Viewing a hot virtual reality augments thermoregulatory responses, lowering body temperature during prolonged exercise

There are many neural inputs that determine the body’s physiological responses to exercise-induced hyperthermia. Many of these inputs are known, such as skin temperature, skin wettedness, and core body temperature. What remains relatively unknown is whether simply viewing a warm environment impacts your thermoregulatory responses and thus, body temperature during exercise. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that when an individual views a hot virtual reality (HOT) they will display greater sweating responses, resulting in lower core body temperature than when a cold virtual environment (COLD) is observed, despite performing the same exercise intensity in a neutral environment. To date, five women (n=5) have taken part in this study (age: 21.4+-2.1 years, height:163.4+-4.0cm, weight: 63.8+- 6.3kg). After an initial screening visit, participants exercised at a fixed work rate (5 W/kg of metabolic heat production) for 40 minutes in a neutral environment wearing a headset that displayed either the HOT or COLD virtual reality. Core body temperature (Tcore: telemetric pill), whole body sweat loss (WBSL: pre-post body mass), heart rate (HR: Polar), subjective thermosensitivity (TS: ASHRAE), and arterial blood pressure were collected throughout the study. When assessing Tcore, there was a significant interaction between visual condition and time (p=0.0003), where the COLD visual condition led to a greater increase in Tcore at 25 min (COLD: 0.81 ± 0.21 vs HOT: 0.604 ± 0.22°C, p=0.008), 30 min (COLD: 0.884 ± 0.20 vs HOT: 0.66 ± 0.24°C, p=0.001), and 35 min (COLD: 0.91 ± 0.24 vs HOT: 0.73 ± 0.20°C, p<0.001) of exercise. Our analysis of TS at the same time points did not reach statistical significance, however, there is an apparent trend of higher perception of temperature in the HOT group (main effect of visual condition, p=0.09) which is consistent with the higher mean TS observed in the HOT group at each time point. There was a trend of higher WBSL in the HOT condition compared to COLD, however, statistical significance was not reached (COLD: 158.2 ± 35.93 vs HOT: 178.2 ± 34.04 g, p=0.17). This data is the first to suggest that your visual surroundings provide valuable sensory information to thermoregulatory centers in the brain during exercise. Manipulating a person’s visual environment may reap benefits in athletic, military, and occupational settings, especially as humans adapt to a warming climate. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.