Virtual reality (VR) research has long centered on presence – the subjective “sense of being” in a virtual world – as a key indicator of user experience quality. Achieving a high sense of presence is crucial because it means users respond to virtual stimuli as if they were real, enabling genuine emotional and behavioral reactions in VR. Early work in this field grappled with how technology and human psychology together produce presence. Prof. Mariano Alcañiz and his collaborators have been at the forefront of this inquiry since the late 1990s, pioneering multidisciplinary studies that span psychology, engineering, and neuroscience. Their body of work explores how technical immersion (display fidelity, interaction methods) and user factors (emotions, cognitive appraisal) jointly impact the feeling of presence, and they introduced innovative methods to measure this elusive phenomenon. Rather than examining isolated VR applications, Prof. Alcañiz’s team has systematically probed fundamental questions about immersive user experience: How do immersive system features affect one’s sense of “being there”? In what ways do emotions and embodiment enhance or alter presence? Can presence be objectively detected via the brain and body? By addressing these questions through a series of experimental studies, they have advanced VR beyond anecdotal reports, establishing a scientific basis for presence and its role in effective virtual environments.

A consistent theme in this work is the tight coupling between emotional engagement and presence. In one of the first major projects led by Prof. Alcañiz (the EMMA project, ca. 2003), the team posited that evoking emotions in VR is not just an outcome but a determinant of presence – a hypothesis that helped shift focus toward content as well as technology. They demonstrated that an emotionally salient virtual scenario could significantly increase a user’s sense of presence, even when using relatively modest VR hardware. Conversely, better immersion technology can amplify emotional responses. For example, in a 1999 study comparing a high-end VR system to a standard PC setup, Alcañiz and colleagues found that participants using the high-end immersive system reported stronger emotional reactions to the same neutral virtual scene. This early finding linked higher presence (enabled by superior hardware) with deeper affective impact, foreshadowing later use of VR for emotional and clinical therapy. In a 2004 experiment, his group systematically varied both the level of immersion and the emotional valence of the virtual environment to gauge their relative contributions to presence. Participants experienced different display setups – from a simple desktop to a large projection wall to a head-mounted display – and either an emotionally neutral scene or an emotion-rich scenario. The results showed that both technological immersion and affective content independently boosted the sense of presence. Notably, immersion had a stronger effect when the virtual content was neutral, whereas with emotionally engaging content the presence ratings were high across the board​. In practical terms, this meant that a compelling narrative or evocative setting could sustain presence even in less immersive systems, while cutting-edge VR hardware made the biggest difference for otherwise bland content. Such insights were novel at the time, underscoring that presence is a multi-factor construct: it emerges from an interplay between the VR system’s features (the medium) and the user’s psychological involvement with the virtual message. Through these studies on emotion and immersion, Prof. Alcañiz’s team helped establish best practices for VR content design – showing, for instance, that adding stereoscopic depth alone does not automatically heighten presence or mood if the scenario is already engaging​, or that user active control in navigation can modulate how immersive an experience feels. Beyond specific results, this line of research framed presence as a user-centric concept, not just a technical attribute: it’s not only about how realistic the graphics are, but also how invested the user is in the virtual experience.

Neuroscientific Approach to Presence

While early presence research relied mostly on questionnaires and subjective reports, Prof. Alcañiz introduced novel objective measures into this domain. A hallmark of his approach has been to treat VR experiences as stimuli that can be evaluated with the tools of neuroscience – an idea relatively uncommon when it was first pursued. In 2009, his group published a pioneering study using transcranial Doppler (TCD) sonography to monitor brain blood flow in VR users. TCD is a non-invasive ultrasound technique that records hemodynamic activity in cerebral arteries. By having participants navigate a virtual environment under different conditions (for example, comparing a fully immersive CAVE-style system to a standard screen, and active free exploration versus passive viewing), they could observe how the brain’s blood flow patterns changed with the level of immersion​. The study revealed measurable brain activity differences corresponding to the immersive conditions: VR scenarios with higher interactivity and surround visuals induced distinct cerebral blood flow changes that were detectable via TCD​. In effect, this work provided physiological evidence that the degree of presence a person feels has neurovascular correlates. It was a first step toward validating presence as a neurocognitive state, not just a self-reported feeling.

Building on this, Prof. Alcañiz’s team incorporated more advanced neuroimaging techniques. They conducted one of the earliest fMRI investigations of VR presence in 2014​. In that study, participants’ brain activity was recorded while they navigated a virtual environment, and was compared to viewing the same scenes via static media (photographs and videos). The fMRI results identified specific brain regions whose activation tracked with the sense of presence​. For example, activity in the insular cortex and postcentral parietal cortex increased in conditions where participants reported a stronger sense of presence, whereas prefrontal regions (like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) showed decreased activation as presence intensified​. This pattern – greater involvement of sensory and self-awareness areas, and suppression of high-level analytical regions – aligns with the idea that being “present” in VR involves immersing oneself in the moment and temporarily suspending reflective judgment (the prefrontal cortex being associated with evaluative thinking). Such neural evidence was groundbreaking, as few previous studies had managed to pinpoint brain correlates of presence due to the technical challenges of combining VR with imaging. Alcañiz’s work demonstrated not only that it was feasible to use fMRI for VR research, but that presence has a discernible signature in the brain (e.g. insular activation, which is known to relate to bodily self-awareness, correlated with feeling present​. Around the same time, his group also used electroencephalography (EEG) to study presence under different viewing setups. In one experiment, they assessed how screen size and user navigation control affected both subjective presence and EEG brainwave patterns. Although full details go beyond our scope, the thrust of that work was to see if certain EEG indicators (perhaps changes in attention-related or engagement-related frequencies) corresponded to higher presence when a user actively explored the virtual world or viewed it on a large, immersive display. By triangulating results from TCD, EEG, and fMRI, Prof. Alcañiz introduced a rich multimodal perspective on presence. He treated presence as something that can be triangulated: what users say (questionnaire ratings), what their brains show, and how their bodies react. Indeed, a recent study from his lab exemplified this integrative approach by simultaneously measuring subjective, behavioral, and physiological presence indicators during a VR task​. In this 2020 study titled “I Walk, Therefore I Am,” participants navigated a virtual maze using different locomotion methods while the researchers collected self-report presence scores, logged behavioral reactions (e.g. reflexes, exploratory behaviors), and recorded physiological data like electrodermal activity (EDA)​. Intriguingly, the team found that these three facets of presence did not always correlate with each other​. For instance, a participant might report high presence subjectively, yet show only modest physiological arousal, or vice versa. This finding challenges the assumption that presence is a single unified state and suggests it has multiple dimensions – a person’s sense of presence might manifest differently at the experiential vs. physiological level. It “opens the door,” as the authors noted, to refining how we define and measure presence in an objective, reliable way. By developing these neuroscientific and multi-metric tools, Prof. Alcañiz’s research has elevated the study of presence from solely subjective assessments to a more rigorous science. It has laid groundwork for future researchers to use biosignals and neurodata as proxies for presence (much like bio-markers of immersion), which is especially valuable in evaluating VR systems where relying on user questionnaires alone could be biased or insufficient.

Another important contribution from this body of work is the examination of embodiment in VR – essentially, the sense of owning and controlling a virtual body – and its relationship to presence and user experience. In collaboration with clinical researchers, Prof. Alcañiz explored how people with motor impairments (specifically stroke survivors) experience presence and body ownership in VR. In a 2019 study, healthy participants and post-stroke patients were immersed in a virtual environment where they embodied a gender-matched avatar. The virtual scenario was experienced under two conditions: one in first-person perspective with a head-mounted display, and the other in a third-person perspective on a standard screen. The goal was to see if the known benefits of first-person VR (which tends to increase presence and the illusion of owning the virtual body) hold true for individuals whose sensory-motor systems have been affected by stroke. The results were encouraging and insightful. Using questionnaires, the researchers found that the first-person HMD condition elicited a significantly greater sense of body ownership and self-location, as well as a higher sense of presence, in both healthy and stroke groups​. This aligns with general VR knowledge that immersive, first-person setups strengthen the user’s feeling of “being inside” the virtual body. More importantly, they discovered that stroke patients can experience embodiment and presence almost as strongly as healthy individuals. Although the patients’ ratings were slightly lower on average, the qualitative pattern was similar – suggesting that the fundamental mechanisms of presence and avatar embodiment remain intact after a stroke. This was the first clear evidence that even people with neurological and motor deficits can achieve a robust sense of presence in VR if the system is well-designed. The implications for rehabilitation are significant: it means immersive VR could be used to engage patients in ways that feel real and motivating, potentially enhancing therapy by leveraging the patient’s intact sense of presence and agency in the virtual world. In broader terms, this study extended the concept of presence to clinical populations, highlighting that presence is a universal phenomenon of human cognition (not limited to young, able-bodied users) and that anyone can benefit from well-crafted immersive experiences as long as the interface is accessible. It also underscored the importance of technological choices (e.g. HMD vs. flat screen) in applications like neurorehabilitation – using an HMD not only produces better task performance but also ensures the patient genuinely feels “present” in the exercise, which could increase engagement and efficacy.

Prof. Alcañiz’s research has also tackled the validity of VR as a medium for real-world behaviors, directly addressing a fundamental question: Do people behave the same in a virtual environment as they would in a comparable real environment? This speaks to the ecological validity of VR simulations and is closely tied to presence (if VR induces high presence, we expect more natural, real-life behavior). To investigate this, his team carried out a unique real-vs-virtual comparison study using an art museum scenario. In 2018–2019, they had participants freely explore a physical museum exhibition and, on a separate occasion, explore a carefully reconstructed virtual museum of the same layout and content (using a modern VR headset for the virtual tour)​. They measured aspects of navigation behavior (like paths taken, areas visited, time spent) and also surveyed participants’ sense of presence in the VR version. The findings provided strong evidence that immersive VR can replicate real-world behavior to a remarkable degree. First, participants reported a high sense of presence in the virtual museum, indicating that the simulation succeeded in making them feel “there”​. Second, and critically, the movement patterns in the real and virtual museum were very similar – people tended to walk to the same kinds of areas and in a similar manner in VR as they did in the real exhibition​. There were only notable differences in the first couple of minutes of exploration: during that initial phase, VR users showed some hesitant behavior (a smaller area explored and a bit more time taken, relative to the real museum)​. This was interpreted as an adaptation period – when first entering VR, participants needed a short time to acclimate to the virtual interface and overcome the initial “wow” factor of the headset experience​. After this adjustment, however, their navigation in the virtual space became statistically indistinguishable from their navigation in the real space​. These results validate immersive VR as an empirical tool: with modern high-fidelity graphics and interaction, a virtual environment can elicit naturalistic behavior after a brief adaptation, supported by the strong presence felt by users. The study’s recommendation was that researchers using VR for behavioral studies should allow a few minutes for users to get used to the virtual setting (to avoid skewing results with novelty effects), but otherwise they can trust that participants will behave authentically in VR. By directly comparing real versus virtual experiences, Prof. Alcañiz’s team underscored how far VR technology has come in closing the gap with reality, largely thanks to the high presence afforded by today’s immersive systems. It also demonstrated the scientific rigor with which the team approached VR user experience, treating presence as a measurable outcome that can be used to validate VR simulations for research and training purposes.

Novelty and Impact

Collectively, the contributions of Prof. Alcañiz and colleagues constitute a novel, holistic approach to studying presence and immersion, one that has significantly influenced the field of virtual environments. One clear aspect of novelty is their integration of objective measurements and neuroscience into presence research. Before this work, presence was often considered inherently subjective and was typically assessed only through questionnaires. By introducing techniques like TCD and fMRI to VR studies, Alcañiz’s team broke new ground – they showed that it’s possible to capture the brain’s response to immersion and even correlate specific neural activity with the degree of presence​. This was a departure from earlier presence research, which had mostly theorized about the mind but had not directly visualized the brain in VR scenarios. The impact is twofold: first, it lent scientific credibility to the concept of presence (demonstrating it has physical correlates, which helps convince skeptics that “presence” is more than a buzzword), and second, it opened up new research questions about the neural underpinnings of immersive experience. For example, their findings of insula and parietal activation suggest that presence might engage brain networks related to self-awareness and spatial processing, an insight that other groups are now examining further. The multi-modal methodology – combining subjective reports with behavioral and physiological data – was also pioneering and is increasingly being adopted by others in the VR community in pursuit of an objective presence index. In essence, Alcañiz’s work injected a strong dose of empiricism and measurement rigor into a topic that was once considered hard to quantify.

Another novel dimension was the emphasis on emotional and cognitive aspects of presence. The team’s early studies treating emotion as both an independent and dependent variable in VR were among the first to empirically confirm the intuitive link between being present and feeling real emotions​. By, for instance, showing that a user’s fear or joy can be heightened through greater presence (and conversely that a powerful emotional narrative can itself heighten presence), they provided a theoretical framework for why VR is so effective in clinical psychology: presence makes the virtual exposures feel real, which is essential for therapies like phobia treatment. Their collaborative paper with Giuseppe Riva in 2007, examining affective interactions in VR, reinforced this idea on an international stage – it argued that presence is the conduit through which virtual experiences produce genuine emotional reactions. These contributions helped shift the field’s mindset from seeing presence as a tech phenomenon (“what hardware gives the best presence”) to a more human-centered understanding (“what the user feels and believes will shape presence”). Likewise, the conceptual work on reality judgment vs. presence​ and the idea of a “third pole” of presence in imagined environments​​ were theoretical innovations that clarified the discourse. Prior to that, researchers often conflated presence (the feeling of being in a virtual world) with the believability or realism of that world. Alcañiz’s collaborators (including psychologists Botella and Baños) devised instruments to separately measure a person’s sense of presence and their explicit judgment of how real the environment seemed. They found these are related but distinct constructs, which was an important nuance for VR evaluation – a simulation can feel compellingly present even if the user knows it’s not “real” in an objective sense. The unitary construct? study in 2000 posed the critical question of whether presence and reality judgment collapse into one factor or not; by validating them with international samples, the team provided evidence that presence should be treated as its own construct in research. Similarly, exploring mental imagery as the “third pole” of presence was quite novel. It extended the traditional model (real vs. virtual) by asking: what about experiences that are neither real nor technologically mediated, but exist only in the mind’s eye? Their result – that pure imagination cannot sustain presence over time the way actual VR can – was a unique contribution. It highlighted VR’s advantage in keeping users engaged (“being there”) compared to techniques like guided imagery. This finding has practical impact in areas like pain distraction or exposure therapy, where one might wonder if having a patient imagine a scenario is as good as putting them in VR. The answer from Alcañiz’s work is that VR has a distinct benefit: it provides a stable external environment that continuously anchors the user’s sense of place, whereas imagination tends to fade and wandeR.

The technological innovations in these studies, while perhaps less flashy than new gadgets, were nonetheless impactful. For example, adapting medical TCD equipment to work in a VR setup, or synchronizing an fMRI paradigm with an interactive virtual task, required significant engineering ingenuity. These advances were shared through publications and have informed other labs attempting similar multimodal research. On the application side, the stroke rehabilitation study was one of the first to use immersive VR to evaluate clinical embodiment and presence. Its impact lies in guiding designers of therapeutic VR: it confirmed that using first-person immersive systems is worth the effort even for clinical populations, because it yields measurably better experiential outcomes​. Moreover, demonstrating that patients felt nearly as present as healthy users has encouraged further development of VR rehabilitation exercises that capitalize on presence to motivate and engage patients. The real vs. virtual museum comparison is impacting how architects, designers, and environmental psychologists view VR – providing hard data that immersive VR can simulate real-world use of spaces accurately after a short acclimation​. This builds confidence in employing VR for things like architectural prototyping, training simulations, or social science studies, saving time and cost while maintaining validity.

In summary, what makes Prof. Alcañiz’s presence and immersion research unique is its comprehensive scope: it spans from low-level brain signals all the way to high-level subjective experience, and from laboratory measurements to real-world applications. Few researchers bridge so many domains in VR research. His team’s work has advanced the understanding of presence by illuminating its multi-factor nature and embedding it in a broader context of human behavior and physiology. These contributions have had wide influence – for instance, the idea that presence is a prerequisite for effective VR therapy is now a staple in the literature, supported by the empirical evidence that Alcañiz and collaborators helped provide. The field of user experience in VR has also been shaped by this work: HCI researchers building VR interfaces now recognize the importance of giving users active control and rich sensory input (to maximize presence), as well as the importance of narrative and emotional design. Through numerous highly-cited studies, Prof. Alcañiz’s research line has become a reference point for both new scholars and established experts interested in how we can best create and measure “being there” in a virtual world.

Conclusion

Prof. Mariano Alcañiz and his collaborators have made seminal contributions to the science of presence, immersion, and user experience in virtual environments. Across two decades of work, they introduced novel experimental paradigms that moved the field beyond subjective anecdotes to objective, quantifiable findings. Key achievements include demonstrating the dual roles of technology and content in shaping presence, revealing that immersive VR can invoke real emotions and behaviors comparable to real life, and pioneering the use of neuroscience methods to capture the brain and body’s response to virtual immersion. They have shown that presence is not a monolithic feeling but a multi-dimensional construct that can be dissected into subjective impression, behavioral response, and physiological arousal – each providing a window into how deeply a person has entered a virtual world. Importantly, this research highlighted that high presence is more than a matter of user enjoyment: it is fundamentally tied to the effectiveness of VR applications, from therapy to training. A strong sense of presence enables virtual experiences to translate into lasting impacts on the user, whether it be learning a skill, overcoming a fear, or engaging in rehabilitation exercises. By enriching the theoretical frameworks of presence (for example, distinguishing it from reality judgment and extending it to imaginative contexts) and by validating VR’s capability to simulate real scenarios faithfully, Prof. Alcañiz’s team has elevated our understanding of what makes an immersive experience successful. Their work serves as a foundation for next-generation VR research – inspiring new investigations into brain-computer interfaces for measuring presence, guiding content creators on how to blend narrative with interactivity for maximal engagement, and influencing clinical practice to incorporate immersive techniques.

Some related papers

Alcañiz, M., Baños, R., Botella, C., & Rey, B. (2003). The EMMA Project: Emotions as a determinant of presence. PsychNology Journal, 1(2), 141-150.

Alcañiz, M., Rey, B., Tembl, J., & Parkhutik, V. (2009). A neuroscience approach to virtual reality experience using transcranial Doppler monitoring. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 18(2), 97-111.

Clemente, M., Rodríguez, A., Rey, B., & Alcañiz, M. (2014). Assessment of the influence of navigation control and screen size on the sense of presence in virtual reality using EEG. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(4), 1584-1592.

Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Rubió, I., Quero, S., García-Palacios, A., & Alcañiz, M. (2008). Presence and emotions in virtual environments: The influence of stereoscopy. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(1), 1-8.

Clemente, M., Rey, B., Rodríguez-Pujadas, A., Barros-Loscertales, A., Baños, R. M., Botella, C., … & Ávila, C. (2014). An fMRI study to analyze neural correlates of presence during virtual reality experiences. Interacting with Computers, 26(3), 269-284.

Rey, B., Alcañiz, M., Tembl, J., & Parkhutik, V. (2010). Brain activity and presence: a preliminary study in different immersive conditions using transcranial Doppler monitoring. Virtual Reality, 14, 55-65.

Riva, G., Mantovani, F., Capideville, C. S., Preziosa, A., Morganti, F., Villani, D., … & Alcañiz, M. (2007). Affective interactions using virtual reality: the link between presence and emotions. Cyberpsychology & behavior, 10(1), 45-56.

Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Alcañiz, M., Liaño, V., Guerrero, B., & Rey, B. (2004). Immersion and emotion: their impact on the sense of presence. Cyberpsychology & behavior, 7(6), 734-741.

Borrego, A., Latorre, J., Alcañiz, M., & Llorens, R. (2019). Embodiment and presence in virtual reality after stroke. A comparative study with healthy subjects. Frontiers in neurology, 10, 1061.

Soler-Domínguez, J. L., De Juan, C., Contero, M., & Alcañiz, M. (2020). I walk, therefore I am: A multidimensional study on the influence of the locomotion method upon presence in virtual reality. Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, 7(5), 577-590.

Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Guerrero, B., Liaño, V., Raya, M. A., & Rey, B. (2005). The third pole of the sense of presence: comparing virtual and imagery spaces. PsychNology J., 3(1), 90-100.

Botella, C., Rey, A., Perpiñá, C., Baños, R., Alcaniz, M., García-Palacios, A., … & Alozano, J. (1999). Differences on presence and reality judgment using a high impact workstation and a PC workstation. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 2(1), 49-52.

Marín-Morales, J., Higuera-Trujillo, J. L., de Juan, C., Llinares, C., Guixeres, J., Iñarra, S., & Alcañiz, M. (2018, July). Presence and navigation: A comparison between the free exploration of a real and a virtual museum. In Proceedings of the 32nd international bcs human computer interaction conference. BCS Learning & Development.

Marín-Morales, J., Higuera-Trujillo, J. L., De-Juan-Ripoll, C., Llinares, C., Guixeres, J., Iñarra, S., & Alcañiz, M. (2019). Navigation comparison between a real and a virtual museum: time-dependent differences using a head mounted display. Interacting with Computers, 31(2), 208-220.

Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Garcia-Palacios, A., Villa, H., Perpiñá, C., & Alcaniz, M. (2000). Presence and reality judgment in virtual environments: a unitary construct?. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 3(3), 327-335.