Participants
nausea, neurological or psychiatric disorders, Covid-19 disease
MOTION SICKNESS
This study was conducted on 60 participants (mean age: 22.08 ± 4.76 years). Participants were recruited either through Université Paris Cité intranet or through RISC (Relay of information on the sciences of cognition). For Université Paris Cité students, participants received credits to validate a course on research methodology. On the RISC platform, voluntary participation in the experiment was compensated by a 10-euro voucher. To be eligible for the study, subjects should: (1) be between 18 and 35 years old, (2) be a French speaker, (3) have normal or corrected vision, (4) not have sensorimotor deficits incompatible with virtual reality navigation, (5) not have a history of neurological or psychiatric disorders, (6) not be taking medication that could affect cognitive functioning, (7) not be easily prone to motion sickness, (8) not be at risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19 disease, (9) not be a regular/expert meditation practitioner. In virtual reality (VR), participants may be subject to nausea related to navigation in a VR environment. This phenomenon, called cybersickness, is more pronounced in individuals prone to motion sickness. This exclusion criterion therefore allowed us to exclude participants who could suffer from this illness during the experiment and thus to reduce the dropout rate of the subjects in the study. The last exclusion criterion concerning the practice of meditation is also important as people who are qualified as “experts” in meditation (i.e. several hours per week for several years), will tend to limit their flow of wandering thoughts more, which could constitute a bias in our studyEach participant was randomly assigned to one of the following two groups: Low Cognitive Load (N = 30, 24 females and 6 males, mean age = 20.96 ± 3.5 years) and High Cognitive Load (N = 30, 27 females and 3 males, mean age = 22.76 ± 5.23) according to a between-subject design. The cognitive load was manipulated in order to induce more (Low Cognitive Load) or less (High Cognitive Load) MW frequencySubjects were matched on demographic (age, t(58) = − 1.57, 