Exploring Neural Biomarkers in Young Adults Resistant to VR Motion Sickness: A Pilot Study of EEG

Abstract

VR (Virtual Reality) Motion Sickness (VRMS) refers to purely visually-induced motion sickness. Not everyone is susceptible to VRMS, but if experienced, nausea will often lead users to withdraw from the ongoing VR applications. VRMS represents a serious challenge in the field of VR ergonomics and human factors. Like other neuro-ergonomics researchers did before, this paper considers VRMS as a brain state problem as various etiologies of VRMS support the claim that VRMS is caused by disagreement between the vestibular and visual sensory inputs. However, what sets this work apart from the existing literature is that it explores anti-VRMS brain patterns via electroencephalogram (EEG) in VRMS-resistant individuals. Based on existing datasets of a previous study, we found enhanced theta activity in the left parietal cortex in VRMS-resistant individuals (N= 10) compared to VRMS-susceptible individuals (N=10). Even though the sample size per se is not large, this finding achieved medium effect size. This finding offers new hypotheses regarding how to reduce VRMS by the enhancement of brain functions per se (e.g., via non-invasive transcranial electrostimulation techniques) without the need to redesign the existing VR content.