Being able to perform under the influence of motion sickness is essential in operational and working environments where people are being exposed to real or apparent motion, e.g., on board ships and aircrafts or in simulators. Operators in high performance occupations need to devote significant cognitive attention to their tasks and when such tasks are executed in moving environments, either con...

Theories pertaining to the "why" of motion sickness are in short supply relative to those detailing the "how." Considering the profoundly disturbing and dysfunctional symptoms of motion sickness, it is difficult to conceive of why this condition is so strongly biologically based in humans and most other mammalian and primate species. It is posited that motion sickness evolved as a potent negati...

BACKGROUND Limited evidence suggests that rizatriptan given before vestibular stimulation reduces motion sickness in persons with migraine-related dizziness. The present study was designed to test whether rizatriptan is also effective in protecting against visually-induced motion sickness and to test whether rizatriptan blocks the augmentation of motion sickness by head pain. MATERIAL AND MET...

Motion sickness typically occurs when the body is subjected to externally imposed motions, but there are situations in which sickness occurs in the absence of imposed motion. We report a new and unanticipated instance of the latter. Subjects in a study of spontaneous standing postural sway sometimes reported dizziness and motion sickness. Reports of sickness were correlated with changes in post...

BACKGROUND Motion sickness is characterized by subjective symptoms that include dizziness and nausea. Studies have shown that subjective symptoms of motion sickness are preceded by differences in standing body sway between those who experience the symptoms and those who are not. Boxers often report dizziness and nausea immediately after bouts. We predicted that pre-bout standing body sway would...

Roughly one in three individuals is highly susceptible to motion sickness and yet the underlying causes of this condition are not well understood. Despite high heritability, no associated genetic factors have been discovered. Here, we conducted the first genome-wide association study on motion sickness in 80 494 individuals from the 23andMe database who were surveyed about car sickness. Thirty-...

Motion sickness experiences were obtained from participants in a 9 month, round the world yacht race. Race participants completed questionnaires on their motion sickness experience 1 week prior to the start of the race, during the race, and following the race. Yacht headings, sea states, and wind directions were recorded throughout the race. Illness and the occurrence of vomiting were related t...

We evaluated the hypothesis that postural instability precedes the onset of motion sickness. Subjects standing in a "moving room" were exposed to nearly global oscillating optical flow. In the experimental condition, the optical oscillations were a complex sum-of-sines between 0.1 and 0.3 Hz, with an excursion of 1.8 cm. This optical motion was of such low frequency and magnitude that it was so...

Discrepant input from vestibular and visual systems may be involved in motion sickness; individual differences in the organization of these systems may therefore give rise to individual differences in propensity to motion sickness. Non-right-handedness has been associated with altered cortical lateralization of vestibular function, such that non-right-handedness is associated with left hemisphe...