Virtual Reality (VR) provides a highly immersive experience with depth perception and three-dimensional representation, offering tremendous potential for applications in education, entertainment, healthcare, and other fields. However, stereoscopic visual fatigue (SVF) symptoms pose a limitation to its development. To investigate SVF induced by depth perception in VR environments and analyze its impact on the depth perception process, this study combined an improved Go/NoGo paradigm with repeated visual perception tasks to maintain participants’ task attention and induce SVF. The effectiveness of SVF induction and attention control was verified through subjective SVF ratings and behavioral data. Effective connectivity analysis identified key brain regions, critical electroencephalography (EEG) oscillations, and timing associated with the depth perception process following SVF. The results indicate that crucial brain regions are primarily located in the dorsal visual pathway, consistent with existing research on depth perception and attention control. The results also show that SVF is associated with a decline in depth perception awareness processing capabilities and is modulated by attention allocation and self-awareness. One-way repeated measures ANOVA results suggest that subdividing the entire α and β frequency bands into sub-bands can more accurately characterize SVF. The α2/θ and θ/(α2+β1) metrics provide a more precise representation of SVF in VR displays.
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