Sensory reweighting after cyber sickness and parabolic flight – insight into multisensory integration under conflict conditions

For Healthcare Professionals:

Sensory conflicts are considered the main cause of motion sickness and cyber sickness. Despite technological advances, the integrative processes during such conflicts remain poorly understood. A recent study by Bonnard et al. (2025) provides new insights into how the brain differentially weights visual and vestibular information under sensory conflict.

🔗 Original studyuon PubMed

Study design:

• Two paradigms:
  1. Visuo-vestibular conflict induced by illusory self-motion (vection) using virtual reality (VR)
  2. Vestibular conflict induced by gravity shifts during parabolic flight
• Measurement methods:
  • Suppression of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) → measure of vestibular weighting
  • Optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) → measure of visual dominance

Key results

• VR exposure reduced VOR response by 12 % → decreased vestibular weighting
• Parabolic flight reduced OKN performance by 13 % → decreased visual weighting
• The modality-specific suppression suggests that the brain systematically down-weights the less reliable signal in context—an adaptive reorganization mechanism.
• Cyber sickness correlated with visual hypersensitivity, while vestibular hypersensitivity correlated with motion sickness severity in parabolic flight.

Conclusion for Practice

These findings support a dynamic sensory reweighting model: the less reliable sensory input is modulated in favor of others. This has important implications for virtual reality applications, astronaut training, and individualized prevention and therapy for motion sickness.

👉 Want to learn which disorders are associated with visual and vestibular hypersensitivity , and how to best treat them?
Current further education opportunities can be found in the IVRT Course search.

For Patients – Easy to Understand

Why we get sick on airplanes or with VR headsets – and what the brain does about it

Many people know the feeling: dizziness or nausea when playing with a VR headset or during an extreme flight maneuver. A new study by Bonnard et al. (2025) shows how our brain re-evaluates sensory impressions in these situations — and how this affects motion sickness .

📄 Original study

What was examined?

Scientists wanted to know how the brain decides which senses to trust when they send conflicting signals. They placed participants in two situations:

1. Virtual reality (VR): Movement was only simulated visually , but the body felt nothing.
2. Parabolic flight: The body felt real movement, but the eyes saw no change.

What are the findings?

• After VR, the brain trusted signals from the balance system (vestibular system) less.
• After parabolic flight, it trusted the eyes less.

In other words: the brain tries to filter out“less accurate” sense to cope better with conflicting impressions.

What does this mean?

Depending on individual sensitivity, some people are more prone to Cyber sickness (VR nausea), while others are more prone to motion sickness . This helps explain who is vulnerable to what — and how these problems might be treated more effectively.

Want to learn more??

If you want to learn more about visually induced dizziness and "Cyber sicknesscheck out our patient information sheets.

There you’ll find explanations on how vestibular rehabilitation and visual habituation exercises can help with motion sickness and cyber sickness.

These treatment methods are offered by our IVRT® dizziness and vestibular therapists.

🎯 Specially trained IVRT® dizziness and vestibular therapists can be found via our IVRT therapist search