Abstract
Sensory conflicts leading to motion sickness can occur not only between but also within sensory modalities. The vestibular organs are located in both left and right inner ears, and their misalignment can be a source of self-motion related sensory conflicts. In the current study, using inner ear magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether morphological asymmetry of the bilateral vestibular organs was associated with motion sickness susceptibility. The results showed a larger position asymmetry of bilateral vestibular organs in individuals with high rather than low susceptibility. In addition, vestibular position asymmetry was associated with reciprocal interaction (negative resting state functional connectivity) between vestibular and visuocortical regions in lowly, but not highly, susceptible individuals. In conclusion, these findings suggest that vestibular morphological asymmetry can be a source of sensory conflicts in individuals with dysfunctional reciprocal visuo-vestibular interactions, a putative neural mechanism for resolving sensory conflicts.
Highlights
Motion sickness has afflicted humans throughout history and is predicted to occur more frequently in the era of self-driving cars (Diels and Bos, 2016)
We evaluated the distance from the sagittal plane to a point cloud centroid of semicircular canal (SC) centerline
In the current study, using inner ear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we examined whether vestibular morphological asymmetry is associated with motion sickness susceptibility
Summary
Motion sickness has afflicted humans throughout history and is predicted to occur more frequently in the era of self-driving cars (Diels and Bos, 2016). The sensory conflict theory (Oman, 1990; Bertolini and Straumann, 2016), the most widely accepted hypothesis for the pathogenesis of motion sickness, posits that motion sickness is caused by conflicted self-motion signals among different sensory modalities (e.g., vision and vestibular sense). The sensory conflicts causing motion sickness can occur within, as well as between, sensory modalities. The vestibular organs are located in both the left and right inner ears, and their functional asymmetry can lead to sensory conflicts with respect to self-motion. Astronauts with higher otolith functional asymmetry are prone to motion sickness in space
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