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Credit: Jeremy Lips/Live Science

Samsung recently released its new virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR (powered by Oculus Rift), but the product comes with a foreboding list of possible health-related side effects.

The electronics giant cautions that people should stop using the Gear VR immediately if they experience seizures, loss of awareness, eye strain, nausea or "any symptoms similar to motion sickness." In addition, the device is not recommended for children younger than 13.

"Prolonged use should be avoided, as this could negatively impact hand-eye coordination, balance and multitasking ability," the lengthy disclaimer warns.

Samsung also says the device should not be used in a moving vehicle, although the Australian airline Qantas recently announced it will soon be providing the headsets to first-class passengers on flights. [ Photos: Virtual Reality Puts Adults in a Child's World]

Virtual reality (VR) is becoming increasingly common in everything from entertainment to medicine to the military. But when it comes to understanding how VR affects the brain, scientists "don't really know what's going on," said Mayank Mehta, a neuroscientist at UCLA.

"I would say this is reason for caution, not business-as-usual," Mehta told Live Science.

Live Science reached out to Samsung, but a company spokesperson declined to comment.

Cybersickness

Scientists have been aware of the potential side effects of VR systems for some time. A number of studies have examined what is sometimes referred to as " cybersickness" or "sim sickness" (short for simulation sickness). These feelings explain why some people feel sick in 3D movies.

"We think when you're walking around in the real world, you're getting input from multiple senses, and they're all in perfect agreement," said Mehta, who studies how virtual environments affect the brains of rats, at the level of individual neurons.

In virtual reality, however, "the brain is expecting everything to be in sync, but things are not in sync," he said; the virtual world is "incomplete."

Brain shutdown

In Mehta's studies, he and his colleagues built special setups with tiny treadmills that the animals could run on while exploring a virtual room. The rats appeared to behave normally in the setup, but when the researchers looked at the animals' brains, they "found really surprising stuff," Mehta said.

For example, in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in mapping an individual's location in space (as well as many other functions, including memory, learning and dreaming), 60 percent of neurons simply "shut down" while the animals were in virtual reality, Mehta found.

And it gets worse. Many of the neurons that don't shut down show abnormal patterns of activity. In the real world, these neurons create a map of space, but in the virtual world, "the map of space is totally destroyed," Mehta said.

Mehta suspects that the part of the brain involved in keeping track of an animal's location is so fine-tuned that it "expects" everything to be in sync. "I believe that's why these neurons are shutting down" in virtual reality, he said.

But is it bad for the animals that the hippocampus shuts down in virtual reality? "We don't know the long-term consequences," Mehta said.

"When millions of us are using virtual reality 6 to 7 hours a day," he said, "we may want to look [into] it, given that it's such a big change."

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Samsung Gear VR: Virtual Reality Tech May Have Nasty Side Effects

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Samsung recently released its new virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR (powered by Oculus Rift), but the product comes with a foreboding list of possible health-related side effects. The electronics giant cautions that people should stop using the Gear VR immediately if they experience seizures, loss of awareness, eye strain, nausea or "any symptoms similar to motion sickness."

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A connection that you could make between
this story and real life is that of the
progression of virtual reality technology.
In the book, feeds are implanted into  people's heads at a young age, it is later revealed that the feed damages your body severely over time. In modern day, we now have virtual reality. This, in a way, connects to how foolish we are when it comes to the side effects of modern technology. 20 years ago, we would yell at children for sitting too close to the TV. Now we have virtual reality, where the screen is literally an inch away from your eyes. Sure, the technology is amazing and, possibly, revolutionary; but have we stopped to think what the long term effects of these devices are? Near the end of the story, it is said that people began to lose their skin and hair, presumably because of the fact that they all have feeds linked to their brains. Who's to say that virtual reality might have somewhat similar side effects? The article addresses the known effects of VR, but what if more arise?

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The theme of this book is that people are so quick to accept new technology, that they never stop to think of the negative impact it could have on them. I believe this because In the story, people implant a “feed” in their child’s head at a young age. Parents never questioned whether or not it was a good idea to get a chip implanted in their child’s brain, barring a small amount of outliers of course. This feed represents technology, it is so innovative and can be used in almost an infinite number of ways, but no one in the story, at least no one besides Violet, realizes what the feeds are doing to people’s bodies. People began to get lesions, yet instead of getting medical help, immediately began to think of them as trendy, some even going as far as to get artificial lesions made on their bodies. Near the end of the story, it is said that people began to lose their skin and hair, presumably an evolution of the side effects of the feed that Violet noticed in the past.. Honestly, I would say that the author is saying that if we do not look into the side effects of this amazing technology now, it might become a habit, leading to events similar to those in the book.

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Violet, in a way, is causing conflicts for Titus. Once her feed starts to deteriorate, he cannot think of her, his girlfriend, as someone who is alive anymore. He feels devastated, deleting all of her messages and, when confronted about it, says things like “No.” and “What memories” (the feed gives you the ability to send memories like an image in a text message, but you relive their memory from their point of view) He blames her for his sadness.

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The setting of the story is futuristic America, but a small portion of the story was set on the moon. There is a large amount of slang in the story that we do not use today; such as “meg brag” and “unit” which shows us that people have simplified the english language even more than me have already; even adults use this slang. It is also shown that public space travel exists, which is supported by the fact that the first scene of the book is Titus and his friends in a spaceship on their way to the moon. The moon is a relevant part of the setting because, while on the moon, Titus, his friends, and Violet all got their feeds hacked. This set up the later plot point of Violet's feed being broken.

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The story is only told from the protagonist Titus’ perspective. There are no examples of other people’s thoughts being conveyed in the text, and we only know and see what Titus knows and sees. “My father said to me..” is an example of this. This line shows us that the text is equivalent to Titus’ own perception of any given situation. As for Titus as a person, he is his time period's equivalent of a cookie cutter teen boy. However, he is quite insecure about his intelligence, but this is more of a trivial feature of his generic personality. However it should be noted that "cookie cutter teens" of his time would have all the same personality traits of what american media would portray a teenage boy to be, for example, a he is rather similar to the basic format of any given male character from the viacom show Degrassi. However, instead of doing drugs, he does the futuristic equivalent, going mal. Going mal is essentially using a program to mess with your feed, impairing your senses, much like the effects of a hallucinogenic drug.