Abstract
Exposed to large coherently moving scene can generate illusion of self-motion perception (vection) among stationary viewers. Depending on the susceptibility to visually induced motion sickness (VIMS), the vection experiences can vary. Past studies exploring the brain activity during vection did not focus on vection onset and individual differences in vection perception. This study aims to identify EEG markers that correlate with the onset and duration of individual vection perception, along with the VIMS susceptibility. We recorded pattern-reversed visual evoked potentials (VEPs) in central visual field while two types of stimuli (static vs. rotating dot pattern) were presented to the peripheral visual field. Eight subjects were recruited with sufficient training to fix their eyes in the central fixation point and press buttons to report their perception state (vection or no-vection) during the stimuli presentation. An achromatic checkerboard reversing every 500ms was used to evoke VEPs. A total of 400/1000 flipping trials was recorded for static/rotating condition respectively. EEG signal from occipital electrodes and Fz/Cz were collected together with EOG. Trials polluted by eye movement, eye-blinks and button pressing were rejected. Significant reductions in peak amplitudes of N1/P1 components were found in trials reported with vection, compared with trials without vection (see supplemental material). Moreover, we found the suppression effects in N1/P1 were correlated with the individual vection duration. The longer the vection, the stronger the suppression in N1/P1 amplitudes was found. Additionally, the strength of effect in P1 significantly predicted VIMS susceptibility of subjects as measured by MSSQ-short. Findings suggested that N1/P1 can be potential objective indicators for vection, while P1 could also be utilized for VIMS prediction with further validation and exploration.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017