Riders may actually feel even less nauseous than they might on any other roller coaster, said Rhodes, because they would be so engrossed in the virtual experience, they won't even notice the track. 'In the case of the roller coaster, this inconsistency will be less strong because riders will be moving,' Triberti said, adding that 'there will more information coming from the environment that says we are moving in tune with the virtual experience … there will be wind in our faces, variations in gravity, etcetera.'Īs long as the virtual-reality experience and the twists of the roller coaster are in sync, riders will feel the physical forces and lean into the loops, without feeling nauseous. Inconsistent signals from the eyes and the rest of the body, especially regarding whether a virtual reality user is moving or not, disturb the brain and cause what scientists call ' cybersickness,' said Stefano Triberti, a psychologist at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, who studies how people mentally process being in a virtual space. This is why virtual-reality technology makes some users feel nauseous. When making a map of space, the brain takes into account smells, sounds, body motion and other aspects of the environment, in addition to visual information. 'It's like when you're in an IMAX theater, you somehow know that it's not real because your neurons are able to tell the difference.' 'If you are in virtual reality - no matter how compelling it is - you know that it is virtual and it's not real,' Mehta said. Nearly 60 percent of the specialized 'GPS cells' in the brain that create mental maps shut down when in a virtual setting, he said. In lab experiments on rats, he found that the brain does not form a mental map of virtual surroundings the way it does in real-world settings.

People who had new experiences and went out in search for food or better places to live had higher chances of survival, Bardo told Live Science.īut people are usually able to tell the difference between a virtual experience and a novel real-life experience, according to Mayank Mehta, a neurophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Generally, seeking such novel experiences is biologically advantageous. These experiences trigger the release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine, and this, combined with the adrenaline from twists and flips on the roller coaster, gives people the feeling of excitement or fear, he added. New and exciting events reinforce limbic reward circuits in the brain, said Bardo, just like food, sex and some drugs. 'Basically, you're taking an already novel, exciting event and putting on top of it another exciting, novel event so you get an additive effect,' said Michael Bardo, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who has studied sensation-seeking behavior.

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