Stroboscopic Vision as a Treatment Motion Sickness

Results obtained from space flight indicate that most space crews will experience some symptoms of motion sickness causing significant impact on the operational objectives that must be accomplished to assure mission success. Based on the initial work of Melvill-Jones, we have evaluated stroboscopic vision as a method of preventing motion sickness. Methods: Nineteen subjects read text while making +/-20deg head movements in the horizontal plane at 0.2 Hz while wearing left-right reversing prisms during exposure to 4 Hz stroboscopic or normal room illumination. Testing was repeated using LCD shutter glasses as the stroboscopic source with an additional 19 subjects. Results: With Strobe, motion sickness was significantly lower than with normal room illumination. Results with the LCD shutter glasses were analogous to those observed with environmental strobe. Conclusions: Stroboscopic illumination appears to be effective where retinal slip is a factor in eliciting motion sickness. Additional research is evaluating the glasses efficacy for, carsickness, sickness in parabolic flight and seasickness. There is evidence from pilot studies showing that the glasses reduce saccade velocity to visually presented targets by approximately half of the normal values. It is interesting to note that adaptation to space flight may also slow saccade velocity.