You Can Ease Motion Sickness With the Press of a Button

Stuck battling car sickness? A new study out of China suggests you could ease your misery with the press of a button—just turn on some music. Researchers at Southwest University found that people who listened to cheerful or soothing music recovered from motion sickness significantly faster than those who listened to sad tunes or no music at all, per US News and World Report. In the experiment, 30 participants donned EEG caps to measure brain activity and sat in a driving simulator designed to trigger motion sickness. Once symptoms set in, people were divided into groups exposed to different types of music—joyful, soft, passionate, or sad—for one minute. Others simply rested or stopped the simulator altogether.

Results showed that both joyful and soft music reduced symptoms by about 57%. Passionate music helped too, but not as much, cutting symptoms by 48%. Rest alone led to a 43% improvement, while sad music only brought a 40% reduction—making it the least effective option. The researchers suspect that gentle music may help by relaxing listeners, while cheerful music might serve as a distraction or trigger brain pathways linked to feeling good. In contrast, sad music could make people feel worse by heightening negative emotions, per HealthDay. Senior researcher Qizong Yue notes the findings of the study, published Tuesday in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, "likely extend to motion sickness experienced during air or sea travel" as well.