Neural Mismatch Model for Adaptive Sensory Remapping

cinematic systems experiments in perception, prediction, and embodied experience

Overview

Project

Neural Mismatch Model for Adaptive Sensory Remapping

Discipline

Emerging Creative Experience Design

Interaction • Motion Systems • Cinematic UX

Status

Research + Prototype Exploration

Neural Mismatch Model for Adaptive Sensory Remapping reframes motion sickness as a failure of perception rather than a physiological side effect to suppress. The project confronts kinetosis at its root: a neural mismatch between visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems whose conflicting predictions destabilize experience. Instead of reducing motion or masking symptoms, Lawson proposed an adaptive sensory remapping framework that dynamically reconciles these signals in real time—an “impossible” challenge that requires reshaping the brain’s internal expectations without introducing new cognitive strain.

The key insight was recognizing motion sickness as a predictive error problem. Drawing from predictive coding and sensory adaptation theories, the model continuously minimizes divergence between expected and actual sensory input, recalibrating perception itself rather than filtering stimuli. This was explored through high-resolution simulations, interactive AR/VR environments, and multisensory prototypes that made perceptual alignment experientially tangible.

The impact is a shift in immersive design philosophy: not making motion safer by reducing it, but making motion believable by redesigning how the body understands it.

Pull Quotes

“The problem wasn’t motion — it was prediction.”

“Comfort isn’t a usability issue. It’s a storytelling requirement.”

“The best UX intervention is the one the user never notices.”

“We didn’t remove motion. We taught the system to speak the body’s language.”

“This isn’t animation — it’s nervous-system choreography.”

ECXD Requirement: Future-Facing Creative Leadership

This Project

Anticipates challenges in spatial computing and immersive storytelling
Reframes limitations as design opportunities
Contributes new language around adaptive immersion

ECXD Signal

✔ Thought leadership

✔ Long-term platform thinking

✔ Aligns with Netflix’s expansion beyond flat screens

This Project

High-fidelity simulations to test perceptual hypotheses
Interactive demos focused on felt experience
Willingness to explore uncomfortable, unsolved problem spaces

ECXD Signal

✔ Research-driven experimentation

✔ Comfortable with ambiguity

✔ Prototype-first mindset

ECXD Requirement: Systems-Level Thinking Across Disciplines

This Project

Integrates neuroscience, perception, interaction design, and motion systems
Treats sensory conflict as a system failure, not a UI bug
Designs adaptive feedback loops rather than fixed interactions

Headlines

Designing for the Body’s Suspension of Disbelief

When Motion Breaks the Story, the System Has to Adapt

Not Less Motion — Smarter Motion

Immersion Fails Before the User Can Explain Why

Directing Perception, Not Just Screens

Challenge

Designing for the moment the body says “no.”

Motion sickness isn’t a UI problem.

It’s not a rendering problem.

It’s not even a hardware problem.

It’s a story-breaking moment — when the body stops believing what the screen is telling it.

As immersive media moves faster, wider, and closer to our senses, traditional solutions fail: dim the visuals, slow the motion, reduce the experience. The challenge was to do the opposite — increase immersion while eliminating discomfort.

The “impossible” problem:

How do you resolve sensory conflict without removing motion, without interrupting narrative flow, and without pulling the user out of the experience?

Impact

This work helped reframe how immersive systems think about comfort, realism, and presence:

Motion sickness was repositioned as a designable condition, not a biological limitation.
AR and VR were reframed as predictive perceptual engines, not static overlays.
Motion became a semantic channel — capable of communicating safety, stability, and intent.

While the work lives at the research frontier rather than as a consumer patent, its influence aligns with emerging standards in immersive design, adaptive interfaces, and sensory prediction models now shaping next-generation AR/VR platforms.

Most importantly, it pushed the idea that great immersive experiences don’t just look real — they feel believable to the body.

Insight

The bug wasn’t motion. It was prediction.

The breakthrough came from reframing the problem.

Motion sickness isn’t caused by movement — it’s caused by neural disagreement.

The visual system predicts motion.

The vestibular system reports motion.

The body compares the two — and when they don’t align, immersion collapses.

Instead of suppressing stimuli, this project introduced a Neural Mismatch Model:

a system that predicts, detects, and actively remaps sensory signals so that the body and the visuals stay in sync — even when the environment is accelerating, turning, or transforming.

In other words:

Rather than asking the user to adapt to the experience, the experience adapts to the user’s nervous system.

This reframed AR/VR from a display problem into a living perceptual system.

Execution

The system was explored through high-fidelity visual simulations and interactive prototypes that treated motion as a first-class storytelling tool.

Cinematic visualizations showed how predicted motion paths and actual sensory input diverge — and how adaptive remapping reconciles them in real time.
Interactive demos allowed participants to experience the difference viscerally: identical motion profiles, radically different bodily responses.
System-level prototypes explored embedded feedback (e.g., spatial cues, peripheral motion signals, proprioceptive anchors) that subtly guide perception without ever demanding attention.

Nothing flashed. Nothing beeped.

The system worked below conscious awareness — exactly where motion lives.

The result felt less like “UX” and more like directing the nervous system.

Impact

This work helped reframe how immersive systems think about comfort, realism, and presence:

Motion sickness was repositioned as a designable condition, not a biological limitation.
AR and VR were reframed as predictive perceptual engines, not static overlays.
Motion became a semantic channel — capable of communicating safety, stability, and intent.

Most importantly, it pushed the idea that great immersive experiences don’t just look real — they feel believable to the body.

Interaction Design

Designed a closed-loop system where user perception continuously informs system behavior.
Interaction occurs pre-cognitively — through sensory alignment rather than explicit input.
Demonstrates interaction as adaptation, not control.

ECXD signal: Designing systems that respond to humans, not just users.

Motion Systems

Motion is not decorative — it’s functional, predictive, and semantic.
Built a framework where motion cues reconcile multiple sensory channels in real time.
Explores motion as infrastructure for meaning, comfort, and trust.

ECXD signal: Motion as a system — not an animation layer.

Cinematic UX

Treats motion as narrative pacing — when acceleration, drift, or stillness means something.
Preserves immersion by preventing sensory “cut scenes” caused by discomfort.
Experience unfolds like a film edit that the viewer never notices — because it feels right.

ECXD signal: UX as storytelling through perception, timing, and embodiment.

Why this belongs in ECXD

This project sits exactly where ECXD operates:

Between biology and interface
Between storytelling and systems
Between cinema and computation

It’s not about adding features.

It’s about removing friction between perception and experience — so the story can keep going.