It comes on sneakily. You become aware of your stomach. You break out in a cold sweat. Your mouth fills with saliva. And before you know it, you’re leaning over the side of the boat (or out of the car, or into the airplane sick bag), barfing up your breakfast. Motion sickness. We’ve all been there, or at least most of us have. Why? What is it about our physiology that breaks down as soon as we travel via water, vehicle, or air? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this episode. From how long humans (and other species) have been coping with these debilitating symptoms to what’s actually going on in your brain to trigger the breakdown, from what’s in the most nauseating historical “cures” for motion sickness to why the drugs we have today have some positive effect, we’re covering it all.
| History | Biology |
| Reason, James T., and Joseph John Brand. Motion sickness. Academic press, 1975. | Golding, J.F., 2016. Motion sickness. Handbook of clinical neurology, 137, pp.371-390. |
| Balme, Jane. “Of boats and string: The maritime colonisation of Australia.” Quaternary International 285 (2013): 68-75. | Shupak, A. and Gordon, C.R., 2006. Motion sickness: advances in pathogenesis, prediction, prevention, and treatment. Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine, 77(12), pp.1213-1223. |
| Gay, Leslie N. “The Development of Dramamine®.” Postgraduate Medicine 19.1 (1956): 80-85. | Reason, J.T., 1978. Motion sickness adaptation: a neural mismatch model. Journal of the royal society of medicine, 71(11), pp.819-829. |
| Godinot, Marc. “Rafting on a wide and wild ocean.” Science 368.6487 (2020): 136-137. | Money, K.E., 1970. Motion sickness. Physiological reviews, 50(1), pp.1-39. |
| Helling, Kai, et al. “Experimentally induced motion sickness in fish: possible role of the otolith organs.” Acta oto-laryngologica 123.4 (2003): 488-492. | Koch, A., Cascorbi, I., Westhofen, M., Dafotakis, M., Klapa, S. and Kuhtz-Buschbeck, J.P., 2018. The neurophysiology and treatment of motion sickness. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 115(41), p.687. |
| Huppert, Doreen, Judy Benson, and Thomas Brandt. “A historical view of motion sickness—a plague at sea and on land, also with military impact.” Frontiers in neurology 8 (2017): 114. | Leung, A.K. and Hon, K.L., 2019. Motion sickness: an overview. Drugs in context, 8. |
| Kealy, Shimona, Julien Louys, and Sue O’Connor. “Least-cost pathway models indicate northern human dispersal from Sunda to Sahul.” Journal of human evolution 125 (2018): 59-70. | Golding, J.F. and Gresty, M.A., 2015. Pathophysiology and treatment of motion sickness. Current opinion in neurology, 28(1), pp.83-88. |
| Napadow, Vitaly, et al. “The brain circuitry underlying the temporal evolution of nausea in humans.” Cerebral cortex 23.4 (2013): 806-813. | Zhang, L.L., Wang, J.Q., Qi, R.R., Pan, L.L., Li, M. and Cai, Y.L., 2016. Motion sickness: current knowledge and recent advance. CNS neuroscience & therapeutics, 22(1), pp.15-24. |
| Oman, Charles M. “Are evolutionary hypotheses for motion sickness” just-so” stories?.” Journal of Vestibular Research 22.2-3 (2012): 117-127. | Keshavarz, B. and Golding, J.F., 2022. Motion sickness: current concepts and management. Current opinion in neurology, 35(1), pp.107-112. |
| De Queiroz, Alan. “The resurrection of oceanic dispersal in historical biogeography.” Trends in ecology & evolution 20.2 (2005): 68-73. | Laessoe, U., Abrahamsen, S., Zepernick, S., Raunsbaek, A. and Stensen, C., 2023. Motion sickness and cybersickness–Sensory mismatch. Physiology & Behavior, 258, p.114015. |
| Strickland Jr, Benjamin A., and George L. Hahn. “The effectiveness of Dramamine in the prevention of airsickness.” Science 109.2832 (1949): 359-360. | Rova, K., Joffily, L., Carvalho, L., Cortese, E., Koohi, N. and Kaski, D., 2024. Motion sickness whilst reading as a passenger in the car is highly predictive of vestibular migraine. Frontiers in neurology, 15, p.1426081. |
| Treisman, Michel. “Motion sickness: an evolutionary hypothesis.” Science 197.4302 (1977): 493-495. | Purves, D., 2001. The otolith organs: the utricle and sacculus. Neuroscience, 4, p.777. |
| Tyler, David B., and Philip Bard. “Motion sickness.” Physiological reviews 29.4 (1949): 311-369. | Somisetty, S., 2019. Neuroanatomy, vestibulo-ocular reflex. StatPearls publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545297/ |
| Wassersug, Richard J., et al. “Motion sickness in amphibians.” Behavioral and neural biology 60.1 (1993): 42-51. | Han, J., Waddington, G., Adams, R., Anson, J. and Liu, Y., 2016. Assessing proprioception: a critical review of methods. Journal of sport and health science, 5(1), pp.80-90. |
| Baloh, R.W., 1998. Vertigo. The Lancet, 352(9143), pp.1841-1846. |
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