Abstract
Evidence is mounting that differences in postural instability can be used to predict who will experience strong illusory self-motions (vection) and become sick when exposed to global patterns of optical flow (e.g., Apthorp et al., PLoS One 9(12):e113897, 2014; Stoffregen and Smart, Brain Res Bull 47:437–448, 1998). This study compared the predictive ability of traditional and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) based measures of postural activity. We initially measured spontaneous fluctuations in the centre of foot pressure (CoP) of our subjects as they stood quietly with their eyes open and closed. They were then repeatedly exposed to two different types of self-motion display. As expected, the oscillating self-motion displays were found to induce stronger vection and greater sickness than the smooth self-motion displays. RQA based measures of spontaneous postural activity proved to be superior predictors of both vection strength and visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). Participants who had displayed lower CoP recurrence rates when standing quietly were more likely to later report stronger vection and VIMS when exposed to both types of optical flow. Vection strength (but not VIMS) was also found to correlate significantly with three other RQA based measures of postural activity (determinism, entropy, and average diagonal line length). We propose that these RQA based measures of spontaneous postural activity could serve as useful diagnostic tools for evaluating who will benefit the most/least from exposure to virtual environments.
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Notes
Further supporting this proposal, a recent study appears to show that postural instability can also predict the strength of auditory induced vection (see Mursic et al. 2017).
Subjects were informed that they might experience slight motion sickness during the visual motion displays and that if this occurred, or if they experienced any other problem during the experiment, they would be free to withdraw with full credit.
The FMS scale has been previously validated against the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ)—see Keshavarz and Hecht (2011).
Stoffregen et al. (2013) have reported that terrestrial measures of postural activity did predict the severity of subsequently experienced sea-sickness.
A reviewer noted that this Dennison and D’Zmura (2017) study appeared to equate “more sway” with “less stability” and that this might underlie their failure to find a relationship between postural activity and sickness. Riccio and Stoffregen’s (1991) postural instability theory does not predict that motion sickness will be preceded by “more sway”, but rather that people who later become sick will have different sway to those who remain well. We agree with the reviewer that postural instability cannot be defined, solely or even primarily, in terms of the spatial magnitude of movement (for further discussion please see Bonnet et al. 2006; Riccio and Stoffregen 1991; Stoffregen 2011; Stoffregen et al. 2010).
Linear measures (such as sway path length) assume the output of the system will be directly proportional to its input. However, because postural stability is achieved via the interaction of a number of different systems it is thought that its outputs should be inherently non-linear.
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This research was supported by a University of Wollongong, Faculty of Social Sciences, Near Miss Grant awarded to SP.
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Palmisano, S., Arcioni, B. & Stapley, P.J. Predicting vection and visually induced motion sickness based on spontaneous postural activity. Exp Brain Res 236, 315–329 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5130-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-5130-1