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Potential factors contributing to observed sex differences in virtual-reality-induced sickness.

Bannigan, Grainne M; de Sousa, Alexandra A; Scheller, Meike; Finnegan, Daniel J; Proulx, Michael J

Potential factors contributing to observed sex differences in virtual-reality-induced sickness. Thumbnail


Authors

Grainne M Bannigan

Alexandra A de Sousa

Daniel J Finnegan

Michael J Proulx



Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been widely adopted for several professional and recreational applications. Despite rapid innovation in hardware and software, one of the long prevailing issues for end users of VR is the experience of VR sickness. Females experience stronger VR sickness compared to males, and previous research has linked susceptibility to VR sickness to the menstrual cycle (Munafo et al., Exp Brain Res 235(3):889-901). Here we investigated the female versus male experience in VR sickness while playing an immersive VR game, comparing days of the menstrual cycle when hormones peak: day 15 (ovulation-peak estrogen) and day 22 (mid-luteal phase-peak progesterone). We found that immersion duration was greater in the second session than the first, and discomfort was lessened, suggesting a powerful adaptation with repeated exposure. Due to the estrogen levels changing along with the exposure, there was no clear independent impact of that; note, though, that there was a significant difference between self-report and physiological measures implying that GSR is potentially an unreliable measure of motion sickness. Although prior work found a delay over 2 days between session would not allow adaptation and habituation to reduce VR sickness susceptibility, we found that a week delay has potential success.

Citation

Bannigan, G. M., de Sousa, A. A., Scheller, M., Finnegan, D. J., & Proulx, M. J. (2024). Potential factors contributing to observed sex differences in virtual-reality-induced sickness. Experimental Brain Research, 242, 463-475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-023-06760-0

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 30, 2023
Online Publication Date Jan 3, 2024
Publication Date Jan 3, 2024
Deposit Date Mar 18, 2024
Publicly Available Date Mar 18, 2024
Journal Experimental brain research
Print ISSN 0014-4819
Electronic ISSN 1432-1106
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 242
Pages 463-475
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-023-06760-0
Keywords Psychophysiology, Motion sickness, Virtual reality, Menstrual cycle
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2151606

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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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