Abstract
Visual stimulation can generate illusory self-motion perception (vection) and cause motion sickness among susceptible people, but the underlying neural mechanism is not fully understood. In this study, SSVEP responses to visual stimuli presented in different parts of the visual field are examined in individuals with different susceptibilities to motion sickness to identify correlates of motion sickness. Alpha band SSVEP data were collected from fifteen university students when they were watching roll-vection-inducing visual stimulation containing: (1) an achromatic checkerboard flickering at 8.6 Hz in the central visual field (CVF) and (2) rotating dots pattern flickering at 12 Hz in the peripheral visual field. Rotating visual stimuli provoked explicit roll-vection perception in all participants. The motion sickness resistant participants showed reduced SSVEP response to CVF checkerboard during vection, while the motion sickness susceptible participants showed increased SSVEP response. The changes of SSVEP in the presence of vection significantly correlated with individual motion sickness susceptibility and rated scores on simulator sickness symptoms. Discussion on how the findings can support the sensory conflict theory is presented. Results offer a new perspective on vection and motion sickness susceptibility.
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Data availability
The data and code generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available for legal/ethical reasons but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- BC:
-
Background condition
- CC:
-
Control condition
- RC:
-
Rotation condition
- RV:
-
Rotation condition with vection perception
- RN:
-
Rotation condition with no-vection
- CVF:
-
Central visual field
- PVF:
-
Peripheral visual field
- EEG:
-
Electroencephalographic
- EOG:
-
Electrooculogram
- EOI:
-
Electrode of interest
- FOV:
-
Field of view
- MS:
-
Motion sickness
- MSSQ:
-
Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire
- MSsus:
-
Motion sickness susceptible
- MSres:
-
Motion sickness resistant
- VEP:
-
Visual evoked potential
- SSVEP:
-
Steady-state Visually Evoked Potential
- SSQ:
-
Simulator Sickness Questionnaire
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Science, Technology, and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality for partially supporting the work under Project No. JCYJ20170413173515472. This study was also partially funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council under Project No. 16200915 and National Natural Science Foundation of China under Project No. 32200923.
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Wei, Y., Wang, Y., Okazaki, Y.O. et al. Motion sickness resistant people showed suppressed steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) under vection-inducing stimulation. Cogn Neurodyn (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-023-09991-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-023-09991-7