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.

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

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Activity Overview

6 month trend

572Downloads

6 month trend

123Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item