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Motion sickness induced using linear visual oscillatory stimuli exhibited sex differences greater than those that have been reported in field studies. Sex differences in motion sickness may vary as a function of the type of motion stimulation (linear versus angular).

We exposed standing men and women to motion relative to the illuminated environment in a moving room. During room motion, we measured the kinematics of standing body sway. Participants were instructed to discontinue immediately if they experienced any symptoms of motion sickness, however mild. For this reason, our analysis of body sway included only movement before the onset of motion sickness. We analyzed the spatial magnitude of postural sway in terms of the positional variability and mean velocity of the center of pressure. We analyzed the multifractality of postural sway in terms of the width of the multifractal spectrum and the degree of multiplicativity of center of pressure positions. Results revealed that postural sway differed between participants who later reported motion sickness and those who did not, replicating previous effects. In a novel effect, postural responses to motion of the illuminated environment differed between women and men. In addition, we identified statistically significant interactions that involved both Sex and motion sickness status. Effects were observed separately in the spatial magnitude and multifractality of sway. The results were consistent with the postural instability theory of motion sickness (Riccio and Stoffregen in Ecol Psychol 3:195-240, 1991) and suggest that Sex differences in motion sickness may be related to Sex differences in the control and stabilization of bodily activity.

Motion sickness is more common among women than among men. Previous research has shown that standing body sway differs between women and men. In addition, research has shown that postural sway differs between individuals who experience visually induced motion sickness and those who do not and that those differences exist before exposure to visual motion stimuli. We asked whether sex differences in postural sway would be related to sex differences in the incidence of visually induced motion sickness. We measured unperturbed standing body sway before participants were exposed to visual motion stimuli that induced motion sickness in some participants. During postural testing, participants performed different visual tasks. Results revealed that postural sway was affected by visual tasks, consistent with the literature. In addition, we found a statistically significant three-way interaction between visual tasks, sex, and (subsequent) motion sickness status. These results suggest that sex differences in motion sickness may be related to sex differences in the control of postural balance.