Facial Skin Pallor Increases During Motion Sickness

Abstract

Abstract A change in facial skin colour from a normal hue toward increasing pallor has been associated with the development of motion sickness. This paper describes an experiment which investigated the use of a white-light reflectance technique for the objective measurement of skin colour during exposure to nauseogenic motion. Twelve subjects participated in four counterbalanced motion conditions, one week apart, with skin colour measurements obtained in the two conditions most likely to result in motion sickness: 0.285 Hz lateral linear and swing oscillations at 2.5 ms-2 peak acceleration. Skin colour measurements, using the L*a*b* colour space, were taken from the forehead, and subjective ratings of sickness (on a 0-6 scale) were obtained during a 12-minute baseline period, a 40-minute (maximum) exposure period and for the first 5 minutes of recovery. There was a significant effect of subjective ratings of sickness on the change from baseline in the a* axis of the L*a*b* skin colour coordinates (P < .001). This was attributable to a reduction in red tone at rating 6 (“moderate nausea”) compared to ratings 0, 1, and 2 (“no symptoms” - “mild symptoms”, P < .05). This study showed an increase in skin pallor, as revealed by a decrease in the degree of red tone in the skin, with the development of moderate nausea during nauseogenic motion exposure. This implies increased sympathetic nervous system vasoconstriction of the superficial facial blood vessels. Skin colour readings using the reflectance meter were easy to obtain and analyse.