Motion sickness is an important challenge for the acceptance of autonomous vehicles. Although the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire (MSSQ) is widely used, it relies on retrospective self-report and does not directly capture vestibular characteristics....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change for clinical audiology practice at this time; findings are exploratory and primarily relevant to vestibular researchers and autonomous vehicle human-factors engineers.
As autonomous vehicles become mainstream, identifying vestibular predictors of motion sickness susceptibility could inform clinical screening tools and rehabilitation strategies for affected passengers.
- 01Vestibular time constant was examined as a predictor of motion sickness in real-world driving conditions.
- 02Study is directly relevant to autonomous vehicle design and passenger comfort research.
- 03Individual variability in inner-ear processing may partly explain differences in motion sickness susceptibility.
- 04Published in Scientific Reports 2026, an open-access peer-reviewed journal.
- 05Findings could eventually support vestibular-based pre-screening for motion sickness risk.
The vestibular time constant predicts individual susceptibility to motion sickness during real-world driving.
studypartially supportedIndividual differences in vestibular time constant are relevant to autonomous vehicle acceptance.
studyunclear- PMID
- 42702655
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-026-68887-8.
- Journal
- Scientific Reports
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Adults assessed for motion sickness susceptibility in real-world driving scenarios
- Intervention
- Measurement of vestibular time constant as a predictor of motion sickness
Primary outcomes
Motion sickness susceptibility during real-world driving; Correlation between vestibular time constant and motion sickness severity