Getting my license was really liberating. Not because I was going to be able to drive
wherever I wanted, but because I was finally going to stop throwing up on every car ride.
Now if you're never had motion sickness, it may be hard for you
to wrap your head around, but for us, a third of the population which is particularly
sensitive, if I sit here, I will be sick. But if I'm here, nothing. Like
everyone else, I've tried a lot of techniques with more or less success, but nothing has
ever worked as well as driving. So how come driving helps
so much? The first thing to do in order to study
why drivers suffer less from motion sickness... is obviously
to verify that this is true. Just because a belief is popular doesn't
make it true. In 1991 there was a study that verified it. Here is the machine
that they used. There are 3 things to note here. The first thing is that they
made a capsule where two people can sit. Second
thing, there's a hitch that you can see here, which connects the heads
of the two people (that's to make sure that they make exactly the same movements).
And third thing, this was clearly before the advent of computer graphics and we get to
see the authors' drawing skills. What the picture doesn't say is that both
participants have a joystick (the equivalent of a steering wheel) in their hands, but only
one of the two joysticks is actually connected to the capsule. It's as if
I too had a steering wheel in my hand, but it weren't connected to anything.
In this configuration, the two people see the same things, feel the same
things, have the same head movements (thanks to the helmet coupling system),
perform the same tasks, they know in which direction they will turn (the researchers
announce it on the microphone), and can stop whenever they want. The only difference
really, is that only one participant actually applies the
rotation. The experience lasts for a total of 6 minutes. The researchers give an instruction:
“ok now we turn right”, “ok now we turn left”...
And both people have to operate their joystick and move their head in same direction
while keeping their eyes open. And we compare which of the two feels worse
at the end. Personally, I'm not feeling so good just from reading the protocol.
Unsurprisingly, both participants felt worse and worse as time went on
in the experiment.
"I don't feel very well. I... I'm gonna go."
Even though both people felt bad,
the difference in feelings, in discomfort, was different depending on the position they occupied
— and therefore much worse for the passenger. This popular belief, probably unsurprisingly
for you, is therefore true. The person who has control over the movement, the driver,
has a kind of immunity to motion sickness. And, here's the frustrating part, we haven't
gone much further than that in our understanding of it. Surprisingly, motion sickness is not
so elucidated. The most common hypothesis is that it would sten from a
discrepancy between our expected sensations and the sensations we actually feel, or
to put it a different way: a discrepancy between the sensations of one sensory system
compared to another. For example, if we're reading a book in a car, our sight receives
fixed information while our vestibular system, our balance, has more complex
sensations: turning, accelerating, slowing down, etc.
So why would our body be so in distress because we're not looking
straight ahead? It's always hard to uncover a why, there is not always
a logical reason for everything. What I've read the most in the research papers than I
studied is that our body *might* interpret (and note the presence of the conditional)
— it would interpret that this conflict of sensations comes from poisoning-induced hallucinations.
Hence the choice to evacuate the poisoning... so as to... fertilize the roadside.
Or, and this is a hypothesis which is completely personal to me, I think
that the body is a bit of a wuss. So why is a third of the population
more sensitive? Exactly what are the mechanisms involved…? Argh, we don't really know.
At least we know some techniques that work to prevent getting sick or to limit the
symptoms: driving, driving softly if you're not behind the wheel yourself,
having a car that doesn't radiate vibrations around 0.2 Hz (apparently this is the worst
frequency), looking at the road and leaning your head in the bends, opening
the window to get some fresh air... or even sleeping. It all works
more or less depending on the people, depending on the intensity of the stimuli,
obviously. Ironically, even though we don't know everything, publications about motion
sickness are plenty. Because self-driving cars are coming,
as in, without a driver, so we really need to understand this phenomenon. We also have
virtual reality which is more and more common in training, maintenance,
a whole bunch of areas. And motion sickness with a helmet on your head is a real
problem. Because clearly, we're right at the heart of this issue of sensory
conflict. If we get a roller coaster simulation in our helmet while we're sitting pretty
on the couch… the effect is instantaneous, as far as I'm concerned. Besides,
on virtual reality, let me give you an example with an article from 2020.
One of the researchers' main results was that if the helmet lenses were not
set to be right in front of our pupils, the participants would feel
sicker. And it turns out that the setting of this distance between the pupils, between
the lenses, in most commercial helmets adapts very well to
big heads with wide-set eyes, not so well to small heads whose eyes
are much closer. And the people who have smaller heads and closer set eyes
—on average, women— tend to be affected by
virtual reality motion sickness more than men. So the technology right now, it's
technically a bit exclusive, but it absolutely does not need to be.
It is a problem which is solved rather easily once identified. In short,
all that to say that this is a field that is very popular and which is not completely
elucidated at all. And specifically on the difference between a person who has
control over movement and a person who doesn't... we don't have much info.
My understanding is that it is a matter of anticipation. Both people
know what motion is about to happen. But only the person who operates the real
joystick knows *exactly* when this motion begins. So their anticipation is a lot
more precise. This micro lag in anticipation could make the difference in feeling
between the two people. And since anticipation is key, if you have become accustomed to
turning your head in the road bends, you have a good method since you're anticipating
the movement and therefore you're giving the information to your body that you are not
hallucinating or poisoned. This video was not very pleasant for me,
I will admit. Reading and writing about it made me feel sick. Yes, I am that conditioned.
Although ironically, in this video, technically… I am the one driving.
I hope that you liked this video more than me anyway. If you
have learned something don't hesitate to subscribe, we're trying to reach
500K subscribers by the end of the year. That would be cool, that would be nice.
So if you want to be part of this 500K team, please click
the button. Now, for this summer. If you've been around for a few years
you'll know that I reduce my YouTube pace over the summer to take a vacation and also
to prepare for new videos in the fall. This year, we still have one video planned
during the summer but I will also run some tests. Because I like
trying things out, mainly. The last three videos on here, you may not
necessarily realize it but they all have had a test element for me,
in my creative process. So I like doing this kind of exploration. And so
the test for this summer will be to publish some Shorts. To be clear, I have no
intention of Shorts becoming the standard on my channel, absolutely not. Besides,
if you want my opinion, I would love for YouTube to separate the two types of video streams.
But whatever. Since many of you will be on vacation, I think that this is the perfect
time to test out a simpler, more easily digestible format. And at the start of the school year,
we will resume the normal Scilabus videos as we like them (at least I hope):
slightly longer formats. Much longer than 1 minute… 1 minute
is so short… Alright, see you next time. Bye!
Tbh, I feel like we could make a blooper section with me going
{sings the Tetris tune}
No, that's Tetris...
It doesn't fit at all.