CHINESE HYPER-SUSCEPTIBILITY TO VECTION-INDUCED MOTION SICKNESS

Little is known about the factors that control individual differences in susceptible to motion sickness. A serendipitous observation in our laboratory that most Chinese subjects become motion sick prompted this study. We used a rotating optokinetic drum to provoke motion sickness and compared gastric responses and symptom reports of Chinese, Europe an-American, and African-American subjects. There was no difference in the responses of European-American and African-American subjects; how ever, Chinese subjects showed significantly greater disturbances in ga stric activity and reported significantly more severe symptoms. We sug gest that this hyper-susceptibility presents a natural model for the s tudy of physiological mechanisms of nausea and other symptoms of motio n sickness.