I was in an environment that conflicted with a lifetime of expectations about how sensory information usually combined to inform me about the world. Sensory signals from the muscles and joints of my body were providing information that was like a cross between the visual input from my eyes and the balance feedback from my inner ears’ motion detectors. But my inner ear was signaling all of this movement to my brain. My eyes were unaware that we were, in fact, shifting up, down and side to side with the waves. I was focused on my immediate environment – the table covered with ocean specimens – which was visually stable. In retrospect, this was the perfect situation for a bout of motion sickness. I didn’t feel back to normal until the next day. Once back on shore, I felt as if I were still moving.
There were intense waves of nausea, and I began vomiting.
I felt exhausted, although I was well rested. Then, slowly I began to feel warm and to salivate. I was unaware of the boat’s gentle pitching and rolling, instead concentrating on the mud and organisms on a table in front of me. It was a day trip, the weather was good and the sea was calm. My first experience with motion sickness was as a college student, standing on the back of a marine research vessel looking at interesting things dredged from the seafloor off the California coast. The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.
0 kommentar(er)
