Science and life: Why we are swayed in transport

SCIENTIFIC DATA EXIST NOT ONLY IN THE SPHERE OF THEORY: many of them are quite capable of improving our lives, or at least explain how it works. Today we understand why we feel bad in moving vehicles.

The cause of motion sickness can be a failure in our brain, who thinks we have been poisoned.

Many have encountered motion sickness in transport: you feel good, but as soon as you get into the car and it moves, or the seat of the aircraft - and it takes off, you immediately begin to feel sick. Dr. Dean Burnett from the University of Cardiff in his book "The Idiot Brain" talks about the most common theory that explains why we are becoming ill in transport. The cause of motion sickness can be a failure in our brain, who thinks we have been poisoned.

In the course of evolution, the human brain has adapted to several types of movement - walking and running - with which certain neurological processes are associated. According to Burnett, mechanical transport exists for a relatively short time, so our brain did not have time to work out mechanisms that recognize that we are moving in space. When traveling by car or plane, there are no signs of movement familiar to us (the muscles are calm, we sit, and our vision is limited by the space of the machine, so we see only a part of the surrounding world), and the brain receives conflicting signals - the vestibular apparatus shows that we are all - are moving. Then the brain finds the only possible explanation: we were poisoned, and nausea is the fastest way to cope with poisoning.

There are other theories. For example, Professor of Kinesiology, Thomas Shtoffregen, thinks that it becomes bad for us because we lose our balance. In addition, scientists note that in an unmanned vehicle, the risk of motion sickness is higher - mainly because passengers are more likely to go about their business and not follow the road.