Manipulating cybersickness in virtual reality-based neurofeedback and its effects on training performance
Lisa Maria Berger, Guilherme Maia de Oliveira Wood, Silvia Erika Kober · Journal of Neural Engineering · 2025
Abstract Objective. Virtual reality (VR) serves as a modern and powerful tool to enrich neurofeedback (NF) and brain–computer interface (BCI) applications as well as to achieve higher user motivation and adherence to training. However, between 20%–80% of all the users develop symptoms of cybersickness (CS), namely nausea, oculomotor problems or disorientation during VR interaction, which influence user performance and behavior in VR. Hence, we investigated whether CS-inducing VR paradigms influence the success of a NF training task. Approach. We tested 39 healthy participants (20 female) in a single-session VR-based NF study. One half of the participants was presented with a high CS-inducing VR-environment where movement speed, field of view and camera angle were varied in a CS-inducing fashion throughout the session and the other half underwent NF training in a less CS-inducing VR environment, where those parameters were held constant. The NF training consisted of 6 runs of 3 min each, in which participants should increase their sensorimotor rhythm (SMR, 12–15 Hz) while keeping artifact control frequencies constant (Theta 4–7 Hz, Beta 16–30 Hz). Heart rate and subjectively experienced CS were also assessed. Main results. The high CS-inducing condition tended to lead to more subjectively experienced CS nausea symptoms than the low CS-inducing condition. Further, women experienced more CS, a higher heart rate and showed a worse NF performance compared to men. However, the SMR activity during the NF training was comparable between both the high and low CS-inducing groups. Both groups were able to increase their SMR across feedback runs, although, there was a tendency of higher SMR power for male participants in the low CS group. Significance. Hence, sickness symptoms in VR do not necessarily impair NF/BCI training success. This takes us one step further in evaluating the practicability of VR in BCI and NF applications. Nevertheless, inter-individual differences in CS susceptibility should be taken into account for VR-based NF applications.