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Background: It is acknowledged that ancestry may play a role in the like li - hood of reporting motion sickness, based upon ques tion naires in which symptoms are reported more frequently in indivi du - als with Asian ancestry. This study compares motion sick ness and re lated vertigo syndromes in Thai and Thai-Chinese populations. Material/Methods: The Motion Sickness Questionnaire; Albany Panic and Pho - bia Questionnaire; Acrophobia Questionnaire; Body Symp toms Ques tionnaire and the Situational Characteristics Questionnaire were administered to 128 participants. Eighty-eight partici pants had a father, mother and all grandparents of Thai ori gin, while 44 participants had with at least one Chinese ancestor among parents or grandparents. Results: All responses were similar between groups except regarding fear of heights, which is significantly higher in Thai partici - pants without recent Chinese ancestors. Conclusions: Reported motion sickness sensitivity is similar between Thai and Chinese populations. The group differences for some fear of heights items may be linked to each group' previous experience with heights. Results also suggest that although conquering a fear of heights might require specific visuovestibular adaptations, these adaptations alone may not be sufficient to lessen an individual'sfear of heights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Visual-vestibular and postural interactions can act as cues that trigger motion sickness and can also have a role in some anxiety disorders. We explore a method to detect individual sensitivity to visual-vestibular unusual patterns, which can signal a vulnerability to develop motion sickness and possibly anxiety disorders such as a fear of heights and panic. Material/Methods: 65 undergraduate students were recruited for the purposes of this study as voluntary participants (44 females); average age 21.65 years (SD=2.84) with normal or corrected to normal vision, without vestibular or postural deficiencies. Panic was assessed with the Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire, Motion Sickness with the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire and Acrophobia was assessed by means of the Acrophobia Questionnaire. The Sharpened Romberg Test was used to test participant's postural balance. The Rod and Frame Test (RFT) measures the participant's ability to align a rod to the vertical within a titled frame providing a measure of error in the perception of verticality by degrees. This test was changed to measure the error offered when a participant's head was tilted, and to trace the error caused by manipulating the vestibular system input. Results: The main findings show only motion sickness to be correlated with significant errors while performing a visual-vestibular challenging situation, and fear of heights is the only anxiety disorder connected with postural stability, although all disorders (fear of heights, panic and motion sickness) are correlated between each other in the selfreport questionnaires. Conclusions: All disorders are correlated to each other in the surveys, and might have some common visual-vestibular origin, in theory. The rod and frame test was exclusively correlated with motion sickness whereas the postural stability test only displayed sensibility to acrophobia. Panic disorder was correlated to neither the RFT nor the Romberg. Although this method was initially employed to increase sensibility in order to detect anxiety disorders, it ended up showing its value in the detection of motion sickness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]