Virtual Reality Radial Arm Maze for the Assessment of Spatial Learning and Memory in Mental Health Disorders

Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a powerful tool in neuroscience and psychiatry, providing immersive and ecologically valid environments to investigate human cognition. Stress is known to disrupt core cognitive functions, particularly learning and memory, which are critical for mental health. While classical paradigms such as the radial arm maze have yielded fundamental insights into animal research, their application in humans has been limited. The aim of this study was to develop NeuroHM, a VR-based radial arm maze, to evaluate spatial learning and memory in adults under experimentally induced stress. A total of 100 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to either a control group (n = 50) or a stress group (n = 50). Participants navigated the virtual radial arm maze from a first-person perspective, relying on distal planetary landmarks to maintain spatial orientation and recall spatial locations. The primary dependent variables were working memory errors, reference memory errors, and latency. Salivary cortisol levels were collected to validate the stress induction protocol and to examine the relationship between stress and cognitive performance. Participants in the stress group showed increased latency and higher reference memory errors compared to controls, with working memory exhibiting the most pronounced impairment. Our findings show that acute stress significantly disrupts cognition and highlight NeuroHM as a promising tool for cognitive assessment in mental health research.