Incremental adaptation to yaw head movements during 30 RPM centrifugation

Artificial Gravity (AG) provided by short-radius centrifugation is a promising countermeasure against the harmful physiological effects of prolonged weightlessness. However, the vestibular stimulus associated with making head movements while rotating presents a challenge. During a head movement, the semicircular canals are excited by a cross-coupled angular acceleration, resulting in tumbling sensations, perceived body tilt, non-compensatory vertical nystagmus, and motion sickness. Past experiments in the Man Vehicle Lab have studied adaptation to yaw head movements while rotating at 23 RPM. To investigate adaptation to head movements at a higher rotation rate, 28 subjects participated in a 3-Day protocol in which centrifuge velocity was incremented from 14 RPM on Day 1, to 23 RPM on Day 2, to 30 RPM on Day 3. Key findings included: 1) 24 subjects completed the protocol with average motion sickness levels remaining below 5 (out of 20). Feasibility of head movements at 30 RPM was demonstrated, suggesting that adaptation to higher rotation rates may be possible.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Elias, Paul Z. (Paul Ziad)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Laurence R. Young.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35579

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35579