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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1468971

To Pre-Process or Not to Pre-Process? On the Role of EEG Enhancement for Cybersickness Characterization and the Importance of Amplitude Modulation Features

Provisionally accepted
Olivier Rosanne Olivier Rosanne 1*Danielle Benesch Danielle Benesch 2Gregory Kratzig Gregory Kratzig 3Simon Paré Simon Paré 4Nicole Bolt Nicole Bolt 5Tiago H Falk Tiago H Falk 1
  • 1 Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université du Québec, Quebec City, Canada
  • 2 Thales (Canada), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
  • 4 Public Safety Canada (PS), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    \abstract{\acrfull{vr} has expanded beyond the entertainment field and has become a valuable tool across different verticals, including healthcare, education, and professional training, just to name a few. Despite these advancements, widespread usage of \acrshort{vr} systems is still limited, mostly due to motion sickness symptoms, such as dizziness, nausea, and headaches, which are collectively termed ``cybersickness''. In this paper, we explore the use of electroencephalography (EEG) as a tool for real-time characterization of cybersickness. In particular, we aim to answer three research questions: (1) what neural patterns are indicative of cybersickness levels, (2) do EEG amplitude modulation features convey more important and explainable patterns, and (3) what role does EEG pre-processing play in overall cybersickness characterization. Experimental results show that minimal pre-processing retains artifacts that may be useful for cybersickness detection (e.g., head and eye movements), while more advanced methods enable the extraction of more interpretable neural patterns that may help the research community gain additional insights on the neural underpinnings of cybersickness. Our experiments show that the proposed amplitude modulation features comprise roughly 60\% of the top-selected features for EEG-based cybersickness detection.}

    Keywords: Cybersickness, virtual reality, Electroencephalography, amplitude modulation, artifact removal

    Received: 22 Jul 2024; Accepted: 07 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Rosanne, Benesch, Kratzig, Paré, Bolt and Falk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Olivier Rosanne, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université du Québec, Quebec City, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.