A Review of Electrostimulation-based Cybersickness Mitigations

Abstract

With the development of consumer virtual reality (VR), people have increasing opportunities to experience cybersickness (CS) -a kind of visuallyinduced motion sickness (MS). In view of the importance of CS mitigation (CSM), this paper reviews the methods of electrostimulation-based CSM (e-CSM), broadly categorised as either "VR-centric" or "Human-centric". "VR-centric" refers to approaches where knowledge regarding the visual motion being experienced in VR directly affects how the neurostimulation is delivered, whereas "Human-centric" approaches focus on the inhibition or enhancement of human functions per se without knowledge of the experienced visual motion. We found that 1) most e-CSM approaches are based on visual-vestibular sensory conflict theoryone of the generally-accepted aetiologies of MS, 2) the majority of e-CSM approaches are vestibular system-centric, either stimulating it to compensate for the mismatched vestibular sensory responses, or inhibiting it to make an artificial and temporary dysfunction in vestibular sensory organs or cortical areas, 3) Vestibular sensory organbased solutions are able to mitigate CS with immediate effect, while the real-time effect of vestibular cortical areas-based methods remains unclear, due to limited public data, 4) Based on subjective assessment, VRcentric approaches could relieve all three kinds of symptoms (nausea, oculomotor, and disorientation), which appears superior to the human-centric ones that could only alleviate one of the symptom types or just have an overall relief effect. Finally, we propose promising future research directions in the development of e-CSM.

Art as therapy in virtual reality: A scoping review

“…However, it has been observed that the lack of tactility could be an uncanny feeling for some but also a trivial matter for others, whose modalities combine inside the VR environment to create an illusion of tactility (Hacmun et al, 2021). Currently, electrostimulation-based techniques are employed to tackle both the issue of tactility absence and cybersickness in VR (Li et al, 2020;Vizcay et al, 2021).…”

Two sides of the same coin: accessibility practices and neurodivergent users' experience of extended reality

“…Some of the challenges that neurodivergent participants described during both survey and interviews were similar to the ones previously reported by neurotypical XR users. For instance, motion sickness linked to hardware characteristics, visual content in the virtual world, or interaction modalities (Li et al. , 2020).…”

“…Some of the challenges that neurodivergent participants described during both survey and interviews were similar to the ones previously reported by neurotypical XR users. For instance, motion sickness linked to hardware characteristics, visual content in the virtual world, or interaction modalities (Li et al, 2020). However, as highlighted in the study by Das et al (2021), compound effects on neurodivergent users are likely to be different from the ones experienced by neurotypical users due to increased sensitivity to inducing factors.…”

Cybersickness Variability by Race: Findings From 6 Studies and a Mini Meta-analysis (Preprint)

“…As medical VR technologies have become more commonplace, cybersickness has transitioned from a nuisance to a potential safety and efficacy concern. Cybersickness concerns have prompted researchers [11][12][13][14], professional groups [15], standards organizations [16], and the US Food and Drug Administration [17] to address prevention, assessment, and mitigation strategies.…”