Abstract
In this study, we tried to identify the cortical
areas associated with the experience of visual discomfort in the viewing
of stereoscopic images. To this purpose, we first conducted a subjective
assessment experiment to select, based on viewers' opinions, two sets
of stereoscopic video sequences: one comprising video sequences generally
rated as comfortable and the other comprising video sequences generally
rated as uncomfortable. The two sets differed mainly with respect
to the absence or presence of excessive screen disparities. Next,
we used these video sequences as stimuli in two functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments so that we could identify differences,
if any, in brain activation while viewing comfortable and uncomfortable
video sequences. We found that, compared to comfortable videos with
small screen disparities, uncomfortable videos with excessive screen
disparities resulted in significantly higher levels of activation
in the following brain areas: the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG),
the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the right inferior parietal
lobule (IPL), the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the bilateral
lingual gyri, the bilateral cuneus, and the right precuneus. The results
of the fMRI experiments suggest that visual discomfort due to excessive
screen disparities can be caused by sensory (related with the subjective
sensation of fusion difficulty and vision clarity) and/or motor (related
with unnatural eye movements) phenomena. The intraparietal sulcus
(IPS) regions in the human brain may be involved in the sensory phenomenon,
and the frontal eye field (FEF), premotor cortex, and IPS regions
may be involved in the motor phenomenon.
© 2015 IEEE
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