Coriolis effects and motion sickness modelling.

Coriolis effects are notorious in relation to disorientation and motion sickness in aircrew. A review is provided of experimental data on these Coriolis effects, including the modulatory effects of adding visual or somatosensory rotatory motion information. A vector analysis of the consequences of head movements during somatosensory, visual and/or vestibular rotatory motion stimulation revealed that the more the sensed angular velocity vector after the head movements is aligned with the gravitoinertial force vector, the less nauseating effects are experienced. It is demonstrated that this is a special case of the subjective vertical conflict theory on motion sickness that assumes that motion sickness may be provoked if a discrepancy is detected between the subjective vertical and the sensed vertical as determined on the basis of incoming sensory information.