Emotional and Cognitive Modulation of Cybersickness: The Role of Pain Catastrophizing and Body Awareness

Objective: The goal was to investigate the influence of the tendency to catastrophize somatic symptoms and body awareness on motion-related sickness. Background: Influences of emotional and cognitive-evaluative processes on the genesis of motion sickness or cybersickness have rarely been investigated. Brain imaging studies showed activation during cybersickness, resembling the pattern found for pain processing. Two aspects often investigated in this context are pain catastrophizing and body awareness. The present two studies investigated the relationship of motion-related sickness to two tendencies involved in pain processing: pain catastrophizing and body awareness. Method: In the first study, 115 participants reported their motion sickness history, pain catastrophizing, and body awareness. In the second study, 40 participants were exposed to a virtual reality and reported their experience of cybersickness as well as their pain catastrophizing and body awareness. Results: Pain catastrophizing was positively correlated to motion sickness history and cybersickness. Body awareness did not show a linear effect on motion sickness history or cybersickness. However, the interaction effect of pain catastrophizing and body awareness was significant in both studies. Conclusion: Pain catastrophizing seems to have a detrimental effect on cybersickness symptoms. Body awareness moderated the relationship in the sense that the combination of high pain catastrophizing and low body awareness lead to the highest sickness levels. Application: Affective and cognitive modulation of cybersickness symptoms should be considered when exposing risk groups to motion-related adverse stimuli.

[1]  OC-064 Psychophysiological And Cortical Responses To Visually Induced Motion Sickness , 2014, Gut.

[2]  M. Riley,et al.  Motion sickness, body movement, and claustrophobia during passive restraint , 2007, Experimental Brain Research.

[3]  R. Fillingim,et al.  Catastrophizing as a mediator of sex differences in pain: differential effects for daily pain versus laboratory-induced pain , 2004, Pain.

[4]  F. Keefe,et al.  Theoretical perspectives on the relation between catastrophizing and pain. , 2001, The Clinical journal of pain.

[5]  S. M. Schulz.  Neural correlates of heart-focused interoception: a functional magnetic resonance imaging meta-analysis , 2016, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[6]  J. Turner,et al.  Pain-Related Catastrophizing: What Is It? , 2001, The Clinical journal of pain.

[7]  E. Vlemincx,et al.  Relationship between interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive sensibility, and alexithymia , 2018 .

[8]  J. Golding,et al.  Suppression of sickness by controlled breathing during mildly nauseogenic motion. , 2003, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[9]  J. May,et al.  The effects of age and sex on susceptibility to motion sickness. , 2001, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[10]  Benoît G. Bardy,et al.  Stance Width Influences Postural Stability and Motion Sickness , 2010 .

[11]  D. Straumann,et al.  Moving in a Moving World: A Review on Vestibular Motion Sickness , 2016, Front. Neurol..

[12]  W. O'NAN.  What is it? , 1952, The Journal of the Kentucky State Medical Association.

[13]  G. Crombez,et al.  The role of neuroticism, pain catastrophizing and pain-related fear in vigilance to pain: a structural equations approach , 2004, Pain.

[14]  Jan Wacker,et al.  Effects of display type and motion control on cybersickness in a virtual bike simulator , 2018, Displays.

[15]  Robert S. Kennedy,et al.  Simulator Sickness Questionnaire: An enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness. , 1993 .

[16]  J. Golding,et al.  Motion sickness susceptibility fluctuates through the menstrual cycle. , 2005, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[17]  C. Rees,et al.  Low mindfulness predicts pain catastrophizing in a fear-avoidance model of chronic pain , 2010, PAIN.

[18]  C. Balaban,et al.  What is nausea? A historical analysis of changing views , 2017, Autonomic Neuroscience.

[19]  Kyungmo Park,et al.  The brain circuitry underlying the temporal evolution of nausea in humans. , 2013, Cerebral cortex.

[20]  Angela Simon,et al.  The Body Awareness Questionnaire: Reliability and Validity , 1989 .

[21]  A. Stewart,et al.  The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) , 2012, PloS one.

[22]  Scott R. Bishop,et al.  The Pain Catastrophizing Scale: Development and validation. , 1995 .

[23]  M. Reschke,et al.  Relationship between motion sickness susceptibility and vestibulo-ocular reflex gain and phase. , 2018, Journal of vestibular research : equilibrium & orientation.

[24]  Thomas A. Stoffregen,et al.  The virtual reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift induces motion sickness and is sexist in its effects , 2017, Experimental Brain Research.

[25]  P. Haggard,et al.  Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership , 2006, Consciousness and Cognition.

[26]  Eugene Nalivaiko,et al.  Cybersickness provoked by head-mounted display affects cutaneous vascular tone, heart rate and reaction time , 2015, Physiology & Behavior.

[27]  Motion sickness and anxiety. , 1988, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[28]  Qasim Aziz,et al.  Visually induced nausea causes characteristic changes in cerebral, autonomic and endocrine function in humans , 2015, The Journal of physiology.

[29]  Moira B. Flanagan,et al.  Motion Sickness and Postural Sway in Console Video Games , 2008, Hum. Factors.

[30]  H. Critchley,et al.  Neural systems supporting interoceptive awareness , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[31]  L. Yardley,et al.  Relationship between postural control and motion sickness in healthy subjects , 1998, Brain Research Bulletin.

[32]  J G May,et al.  An evaluation of cognitive-behavioral therapy for training resistance to visually-induced motion sickness. , 1989, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[33]  M. Sullivan,et al.  Tendency to Catastrophize Somatic Sensations: Pain Catastrophizing and Anxiety Sensitivity in Predicting Headache , 2006, Cognitive behaviour therapy.

[34]  H O Leimann Patt,et al.  Neuropsychiatric observations of proprioceptive sensitivity in motion sickness susceptibility. , 1988, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[35]  Collins We,et al.  Some psychological correlates of motion sickness susceptibility. , 1977 .

[36]  Hadley Wickham,et al.  ggplot2 - Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (2nd Edition) , 2017 .

[37]  R. So,et al.  Correlations between individual susceptibility to visually induced motion sickness and decaying time constant of after-nystagmus. , 2017, Applied ergonomics.

[38]  R Core Team,et al.  R: A language and environment for statistical computing. , 2014 .

[39]  J. Golding.  Predicting individual differences in motion sickness susceptibility by questionnaire , 2006 .

[40]  H. Eriksson,et al.  Body awareness therapy: a new strategy for relief of symptoms in irritable bowel syndrome patients. , 2007, World journal of gastroenterology.

[41]  Christopher Eccleston,et al.  Disengagement from pain: the role of catastrophic thinking about pain , 2004, Pain.

[42]  Fuat Buyuklu,et al.  Vestibular functions in motion sickness susceptible individuals , 2009, European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology.

[43]  T. Wager,et al.  Opposing Effects of Expectancy and Somatic Focus on Pain , 2012, PloS one.

[44]  A. Stewart,et al.  Body Awareness: Construct and Self-Report Measures , 2009, PloS one.

[45]  M. Sullivan,et al.  Pain Catastrophizing and Symptom Severity During Upper Respiratory Tract Illness , 2003, The Clinical journal of pain.

[46]  K. Ginzburg,et al.  Body awareness: differentiating between sensitivity to and monitoring of bodily signals , 2014, Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

[47]  J M Lentz,et al.  Some psychological correlates of motion sickness susceptibility. , 1977, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[48]  O. Pollatos,et al.  Interoception across Modalities: On the Relationship between Cardiac Awareness and the Sensitivity for Gastric Functions , 2012, PloS one.

[49]  Jelte E Bos,et al.  Less sickness with more motion and/or mental distraction. , 2015, Journal of vestibular research : equilibrium & orientation.

[50]  R. Edwards,et al.  Pain catastrophizing: a critical review , 2009, Expert review of neurotherapeutics.

[51]  D. Clauw,et al.  Pain catastrophizing and neural responses to pain among persons with fibromyalgia. , 2004, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[52]  S. Van Damme,et al.  Effects of mindfulness and distraction on pain depend upon individual differences in pain catastrophizing: An experimental study , 2014, European journal of pain.

[53]  C. Fowler,et al.  Effects of motion sickness severity on the vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials. , 2014, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology.

[54]  G. Crombez,et al.  The effects of catastrophic thinking about pain on attentional interference by pain: no mediation of negative affectivity in healthy volunteers and in patients with low back pain. , 2002, Pain research & management.

[55]  W. Goodman,et al.  Neural correlates of interoception: Effects of interoceptive focus and relationship to dimensional measures of body awareness , 2017, Human brain mapping.

[56]  Heiko Hecht,et al.  Pleasant music as a countermeasure against visually induced motion sickness. , 2014, Applied ergonomics.