Time experience in a VR-Starfield in Patients with Depression

In this study we investigate time experience in patients with depression and its susceptibility to visual stimuli in virtual reality. Participants wearing a head-mounted VR system that evokes the experience of flying through a virtual starfield while tracking the colors of the surrounding stars. In intervals of 8 - 18 sec participants have to report the currently predominating color and are asked to either estimate the duration of the past interval or report on their experience of passage of time in this interval. We study the effects of basic visual aspects of the stimulus (velocity and density of stars) and the duration of the interval on the two types of time experience. Furthermore, we test whether the judgments of duration of time or passage of time systematically differ between patients with depression and healthy controls and whether the diagnostic groups significantly mediate the effects of stimulus properties on time experience. The experiment will be conducted in two blocks on two different days with each block only ever containing one type of time experience judgments.