Data from: Demonstrating the potential for dynamic auditory stimulation to contribute to motion sickness

Auditory cues can create the illusion of self-motion (vection) in the absence of visual or physical stimulation. The present study aimed to determine whether auditory cues alone can also elicit motion sickness and how auditory cues contribute to motion sickness when added to visual motion stimuli. Twenty participants were seated in front of a curved projection display and were exposed to a virtual scene that constantly rotated around the participant's vertical axis. The virtual scene contained either visual-only, auditory-only, or a combination of corresponding visual and auditory cues. All participants performed all three conditions in a counterbalanced order. Participants tilted their heads alternately towards the right or left shoulder in all conditions during stimulus exposure in order to create pseudo-Coriolis effects and to maximize the likelihood for motion sickness. Measurements of motion sickness (onset, severity), vection (latency, strength, duration), and postural steadiness (center of pressure) were recorded. Results showed that adding auditory cues to the visual stimuli did not, on average, affect motion sickness and postural steadiness, but it did reduce vection onset times and increased vection strength compared to pure visual or pure auditory stimulation. Eighteen of the 20 participants reported at least slight motion sickness in the two conditions including visual stimuli. More interestingly, six participants also reported slight motion sickness during pure auditory stimulation and two of the six participants stopped the pure auditory test session due to motion sickness. The present study is the first to demonstrate that motion sickness may be caused by pure auditory stimulation, which we refer to as “auditorily induced motion sickness”.

听觉线索可在无视觉或物理刺激的情况下，诱发个体产生自身运动错觉（vection）。本研究旨在探究仅依靠听觉线索是否亦可引发晕动病，以及当听觉线索与视觉运动刺激结合时，其对晕动病的影响机制。招募20名被试，使其坐于曲面投影显示器前方，暴露于绕被试垂直轴持续旋转的虚拟场景中。该虚拟场景仅包含视觉线索、仅包含听觉线索，或同时包含对应的视觉与听觉线索。所有被试均以平衡顺序完成全部三种实验条件。在所有实验条件的刺激呈现阶段，被试均需交替向右侧或左侧肩部倾斜头部，以模拟伪科里奥利效应，并提升晕动病发作的可能性。研究人员记录了晕动病相关指标（发作时间、严重程度）、自身运动错觉（潜伏期、强度、持续时间）以及姿势稳定性（压力中心）的测量数据。结果显示，相较于单纯视觉或单纯听觉刺激，为视觉刺激添加听觉线索后，平均而言并未对晕动病与姿势稳定性产生影响，但可缩短自身运动错觉的发作时间并提升其强度。20名被试中有18名在包含视觉线索的两种实验条件下报告出现了轻度晕动病。更值得关注的是，6名被试在纯听觉刺激条件下同样报告出现轻度晕动病，其中2人因晕动病终止了纯听觉实验环节。本研究首次证实，纯听觉刺激亦可引发晕动病，我们将其称之为‘听觉诱发性晕动病（auditorily induced motion sickness）’。