Heritability of movie-evoked brain activity and connectivity.

Medical extended reality (MXR) represents a transformative intersection of health care and immersive technologies, encompassing virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and other technologies that extend or enhance the medical experience. The roots of MXR trace back to the early experiments with VR in the 1980s and 1990s for psychological therapies and simulation training, among other uses. Over the years, as technology advanced, MXR applications broadened considerably, eventually gaining recognition from regulatory bodies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This acknowledgment by regulators not only marks an important milestone in the field of MXR but also paves the way for further innovation and integration into standard health care practices. The field of MXR has witnessed an exponential increase in scholarly interest, with tens of thousands of articles published, demonstrating year-over-year growth. illustrates the trajectory of peer-reviewed articles in PubMed that include the terms “virtual reality,” “augmented reality,” or “mixed reality”; it reveals an explosive increase in the MXR literature. As of this writing in January 2024, there have been >26,000 articles in academic science and medicine using these keywords.