What if virtual reality could go beyond sight and sound—and truly let users feel the digital world at their fingertips?
A research team from POSTECH has successfully measured how tactile sensations in virtual reality (VR) influence human brain activity. By combining an MRI-compatible haptic device with functional brain imaging, the researchers captured how the brain begins to perceive virtual experiences as “real” when touch is added to visual and auditory stimuli.
The study was led by professor Keehoon Kim of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH and graduate researcher Joonsub Byun, in collaboration with professors Yong-An Chung and Hyeonseok Jeong from the Catholic University of Korea, as well as Dr. Jooyeon Kim from the Korea Basic Science Institute. Their findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE .
Virtual reality technologies are already widely used in healthcare, education, gaming, and training. However, one fundamental challenge has remained unresolved: objectively measuring how deeply a person is immersed in a virtual environment. Until now, immersion has largely been evaluated through subjective questionnaires asking users how realistic or engaging the experience felt.
To truly determine whether the brain accepts a virtual environment as reality, researchers needed to directly observe neural responses. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers a powerful way to monitor brain activity, but conventional electronic haptic devices cannot operate inside MRI systems because the strong magnetic fields are incompatible with metallic components.
To overcome this limitation, the POSTECH team developed a pneumatic multi-finger haptic display powered entirely by air pressure rather than metal-based actuators. The device delivers independent tactile sensations to four fingers simultaneously while using only non-magnetic materials, allowing it to function safely inside an MRI scanner without compromising imaging quality.
Using the device, the researchers compared brain activity during VR experiences with and without tactile feedback. Experiments were conducted using a 3T (3 Tesla) fMRI system, which provides high-resolution measurements of neural activity with twice the magnetic field strength of a standard clinical MRI scanner. The results revealed that when tactile sensations were added to VR experiences, brain activation extended far beyond the regions responsible for touch alone. Areas involved in motor control, attention, and cognitive processing also showed significantly stronger responses. Most notably, neural activity increased dramatically when tactile feedback was temporally synchronized precisely with visual and auditory stimuli. The findings suggest that the human brain begins to interpret virtual experiences as genuinely real when multiple sensory signals—seeing, hearing, and touching—are integrated in perfect temporal alignment.
The implications of the technology extend well beyond gaming alone. In medicine, the platform could improve surgical simulation training and enable clinicians to evaluate the effectiveness of VR-based therapies for pain management, phobias, and rehabilitation through objective brain data. The technology may also contribute to remote robotic surgery, immersive educational content, and standardized neural evaluation methods for VR content.
Professor Keehoon Kim explained, “To create truly immersive virtual reality experiences, tactile sensations at the fingertips play a critical role alongside visual and auditory feedback. This study is meaningful because it introduces a new platform capable of quantitatively analyzing VR experiences using brain activity data rather than relying solely on subjective questionnaires.”
The research was supported by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Technology R&D Project for Dental and Medical Technologies, the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Mid-Career Researcher Program and Outstanding Young Researcher Program, and POSCO Holdings.
PLOS One
Exploring immersion through a fMRI-compatible multi-finger handheld haptic display
27-Mar-2026