A Comprehensive Analysis of the Influence of Cognitive Load on Physiological Signals in Virtual Reality

Our dataset comprises physiological, behavioral and subjective data collected from 36 users in VR. This was captured in a visual-search experiment under four different conditions, resulting of the combination of: high-low cognitive load (CL) conditions, and 90º-360º search areas. During the low CL condition, users were asked to search for target objects in a virtual room, while the high CL included an additional auditory secondary task. The 90º search area limited the spawn of target objects to one wall in front of the user, while the 360º search area forced the users to rotate to find the obejcts. For each user, we include:

• Electrocardiogram (ECG)
• Respiration (ImP)
• Electrodermal Activity (EDA)
• Photoplethysmography (PPG)
• Gaze Data
• Pupil Size
• Performance Scores
• Inertial Measurements
• Demographics Questionnaire
• Shortened Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ)
• NASA TLX Questionnaire

Project page, documentation and additional information: https://graphics.unizar.es/projects/CL_Biosignals/

If you find our dataset useful, please cite the corresponding publication: Pina, J., Bernal-Berdun, E., Martin, D., Malpica, S., Real, C., Barquero A., Armañac-Julián, P., Lazaro, J., Martín-Yebra, A., Masia, B., Serrano, A.. A Comprehensive Analysis of the Influence of Cognitive Load on Physiological Signals in Virtual Reality . In 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) (2025), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 433–443. DOI: 10.1109/ISMAR67309.2025.00054