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Cybersickness: a multisensory integration perspective

Gallagher, M. and Ferrè, Elisa Raffaella (2018) Cybersickness: a multisensory integration perspective. Multisensory Research 31 (7), pp. 645-674. ISSN 2213-4808.

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Abstract

In the past decade, there has been a rapid advance in Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Key to the user’s VR experience are multimodal interactions involving all senses. The human brain must integrate real-time vision, hearing, vestibular and proprioceptive inputs to produce the compelling and captivating feeling of immersion in a VR environment. A serious problem with VR is that users may develop symptoms similar to motion sickness, a malady called cybersickness. At present the underlying cause of cybersickness is not yet fully understood. Cybersickness may be due to a discrepancy between the sensory signals which provide information about the body’s orientation and motion: in many VR applications, optic flow elicits an illusory sensation of motion which tells users that they are moving in a certain direction with certain acceleration. However, since users are not actually moving, their proprioceptive and vestibular organs provide no cues of self-motion. These conflicting signals may lead to sensory discrepancies and eventually cybersickness. Here we review the current literature to develop a conceptual scheme for understanding the neural mechanisms of cybersickness. We discuss an approach to cybersickness based on sensory cue integration, focusing on the dynamic re-weighting of visual and vestibular signals for self-motion.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Cybersickness, Virtual Reality, motion sickness, vestibular system, multisensory integration
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Depositing User: Elisa Raffaella Ferre
Date Deposited: 27 Sep 2021 15:05
Last Modified: 13 Apr 2025 20:11
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/45547

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