Medical countermeasures include drugs, such as antihistamines and anticholinergics, which are effective in reducing motion sickness, but unfortunately also cause serious side-effects such as drowsiness, lethargy, and dry mouth (Koch et al. The Bárány Society also developed more specific diagnostic criteria for motion sickness and VIMS regarding various adverse reactions and their occurrence, duration, and remission (see Cha et al. 2021 Golding and Gresty 2015 Keshavarz et al. If these symptoms are not triggered by physical motion alone, but rather involve visual stimuli at odds with the other senses, this malaise is referred to as visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) (for an overview, see Bronstein et al. Unfortunately, many users experience mild or severe motion sickness symptoms, such as nausea, disorientation, or oculomotor difficulties (Kennedy et al. 2018 Grabowski and Jankowski 2015 Hartmann and Fox 2020 Kinateder et al. Virtual reality (VR) technologies and the use of head-mounted displays (HMD) are growing in popularity for a variety of applications, including entertainment, education, and emergency response training (see, e.g., Ahir et al. Possible mechanisms behind the effect are discussed. Thus, chewing gum may be useful as an affordable, accepted, and easy-to-access way to mitigate VIMS in numerous applications like education or training. Additionally, taste ratings correlated slightly negatively with both the SSQ and the peak FMS scores, suggesting that pleasant taste of the chewing gum is associated with less VIMS.
#BEERSMITH TASTE RATING SIMULATOR#
Before and after VR exposure, we assessed VIMS with the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), and during the virtual flight once every minute with the Fast Motion Sickness Scale (FMS). 77 subjects were assigned to three experimental groups (control, peppermint gum, and ginger gum) and completed a 15-min virtual helicopter flight, using a VR head-mounted display. Our study investigated whether gustatory-motor stimulation by chewing gum leads to a reduction of VIMS symptoms. Chewing gum combines both in an easy-to-administer fashion and should thus be an effective countermeasure against VIMS. Mechanical stimulation of the mastoid and diverting attention to pleasant stimuli-like odors or music have been found to ameliorate VIMS. Its unpleasant symptoms may limit the acceptance of VR technologies for training or clinical purposes. Visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) is a common side-effect of exposure to virtual reality (VR).