![]() Last year, a team led by Bethann Hromatka, a biomedical scientist at genetics company 23andMe looked across the entire human genome to see which genetic changes might increase a person's likelihood of becoming motion sick. The goggles seemed to help – the participants who wore them tolerated simulated motion sickness throughout the duration of the 30 minute study – those without glasses lasted on average 24 minutes.Īnd in 2013, psychologists Behrang Keshavarz at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and Heiko Hecht of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz published a paper describing how pleasant music and odours helped ease the visually induced motion sickness that comes with wearing a virtual reality headset. The lenses were made of LCD ‘shutters’ that rapidly switched from dark to clear, allowing four 10-millisecond ‘flashes’ of light to come through each second. The researchers came up with goggles that mimicked a strobe effect to ‘freeze’ the moving visual scene on the retina. In 2006, Nasa scientists decided to test an idea first suggested in 1981, that rapidly flashing strobe lights could lessen the effects of motion sickness. There are even drug-free solutions in the pipeline. Other popular medications prescribed today are Ondansetron (which combats nausea and dizziness), Meclizine (an antihistamine that addresses dizziness and vertigo), Transderm scopolamine patches (for dizziness and vertigo – with the advantage that they don’t have to be swallowed and that they work continuously for three days), and Valium (a vestibular suppressant). Giving the therapy to passengers on the ‘Vomit Comet’ - a Nasa aircraft that achieves a few seconds of zero gravity in the name of science – cut the rate of motion sickness from 70% to about 12%. He found he could combat the problem by giving them scopolamine to prevent vomiting – and dextroamphetamine to deal with scopolamine-induced drowsiness. “They do work, but they have side effects,” he says, such as sleepiness.ĭuring his career, Locke put dozens of people into spinning chairs, and noticed that about 70% of participants would get sick, pretty much at exactly the same point on each ride. The drugs suppress vestibular feelings and other brain processes. Oman, the director of the Man Vehicle Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Īnticholinergics, antihistamines, amphetamines and serotonin agents are still the most used drugs to treat the condition, says James Locke, a flight surgeon at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “More effective methods for prevention and treatment are some distance away”, says Charles M. In terms of medication, science hasn’t really moved on much during the past few decades. Some wear wristbands with pressure pads, others swear by consuming ginger and peppermint tea to settle the nausea. So how should we deal with motion sickness? There is no lack of treatments, but many at best result in a placebo effect, says Timothy Hain, a neurologist specialising in the interface between the ears and the brain, and professor emeritus at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. We don’t even really know why the sensory conflict actually triggers vomiting it is thought that some neural pathways activate the brain's vomiting centre, believed to be located in the medulla, part of the brain at the top of the spinal cord. We are aware that it seems to be much more common in women than in men, and appears to be strongly hereditary, but that’s about it. This causes a subtle movement known as body sway people deal with it subconsciously all the time. Our body is never truly motionless – muscles are always active even when we stand still. In the early 1990s, a group of researchers developed a different explanation, the so-called ‘postural instability’ theory, which states that people experience nausea in situations where they have not yet learned ways to maintain a stable posture. ![]() A 1968 study found that deaf participants on a narrow, wooden boat in 40-foot swells off the shore of Nova Scotia did not succumb to the condition. ![]() This offers an explanation for the observation that a functioning vestibular system is a prerequisite to get motion sickness. Basically, when you’re in a car or a plane, your inner ear signals that you're moving, but your eyes say that you're not – because your body is motionless in relation to its immediate environment, such as your seat, the floor, or the seat in front. In simple terms, the central nervous system receives conflicting messages from the body’s balance receptors: the inner ears (vestibular system), the eyes (visual system), and the muscles down the back all the way to your feet (proprioceptive system). The most popular explanation for motion sickness, however, is that it arises from a visual-vestibular mismatch.
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