NASA program to train people mitigate motion sickness
By ANIThursday, August 5, 2010
WASHINGTON - Remember that squeamish feeling while travelling for too long, or even standing on the stage to deliver a speech? NASA has now come to your rescue.
Its new program is designed to train people to overcome airsickness; even the Navy is testing it on its pilots and crew.
Although medications exist to quell sickness, they can have side effects such as sleepiness and a lack of mental acuity.
NASA psychologists developed a six-hour anti-motion sickness training program, known as the Autogenic Feedback Training Exercise.
Study participants wear sensors that measure heart rate, respiration and other systems and learn exercises to induce sensations, such as warmth in the hands, which are associated with specific physiological responses.
“These things we thought that we could not control, we just never learned how to. This system holds up a mirror. You’re seeing your own biology,” Discovery News quoted Mae Jemison as saying.
“Unlike relaxation training, subjects learn to recognize physiological changes associated with motion stimulation (i.e. rotating chair tests) and to voluntarily ‘mimic’ their own resting levels,” the study says.
The program could have commercial applications like enhancing athletic performance or mitigating fear of public speaking. (ANI)
