Reduction of cybersickness during and immediately following noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation.

Reduction of cybersickness during and immediately following noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation. Exp Brain Res. 2020 Jan 14;: Authors: Weech S, Wall T, Barnett-Cowan M Abstract The mechanism underlying cybersickness during virtual reality (VR) exposure is still poorly understood, although research has highlighted a causal role for visual-vestibular sensory conflict. Recently established methods for reducing cybersickness include galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) to mimic absent vestibular cues in VR, or vibration of the vestibular organs to add noise to the sensory modality. Here, we examined if applying noise to the vestibular system using noisy-current GVS affects sickness severity in VR. Participants were exposed to one of the two VR games that were classified as either moderately or intensely nauseogenic. The VR content lasted for 50 min and was broken down into three blocks: 30 min of gameplay during exposure to either noisy GVS (± 1750 μA) or sham stimulation (0 μA), and 10 min of gameplay before and after this block. We characterized the effects of noisy GVS in terms of post-minus-pre-exposure cybersickness scores. In the intense VR condition, we found a main effect of noisy vestibular stimulation on a verbal cybersickness scale, but not for questionnaire measures of cybersickness. Participants reported lower cybersickness scores during and directly after exposure to GVS. However, this difference was quickly ex...
Source: Experimental Brain Research - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Exp Brain Res Source Type: research