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躯体刺激的条件下，诱发自体运动错觉（vection）。本研究旨在探明：仅依靠听觉线索是否同样可诱发运动病，以及当听觉线索与视觉运动刺激结合时，其对运动病的影响机制。本研究选取20名被试，使其坐在弧形投影显示屏前，置身于围绕自身垂直轴持续旋转的虚拟场景中。该虚拟场景分别设置了纯视觉、纯听觉，以及视听对应线索结合三种实验条件。所有被试均以平衡抵消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，被试需交替将头部偏向右侧或左侧肩部，以营造伪科里奥利效应，并最大化运动病的诱发概率。研究记录了多项指标：运动病（发作时间、严重程度）、自体运动错觉（潜伏期、强度、持续时长）以及姿势稳定性（重心压力中心）的相关数据。结果显示：在视觉刺激中加入听觉线索后，整体上并未对运动病及姿势稳定性产生显著影响，但相较于纯视觉或纯听觉刺激，该操作可缩短自体运动错觉的发作潜伏期，并提升其强度。在包含视觉刺激的两种实验条件中，20名被试中有18名报告出现了至少轻度的运动病症状。更值得关注的是，有6名被试在纯听觉刺激条件下同样报告出现了轻度运动病症状，其中2人因难以忍受运动病而终止了纯听觉实验环节。本研究首次证实，纯听觉刺激可诱发运动病，我们将此种现象命名为"听觉诱导性运动病"。