“Motion sickness significantly impairs the travel experience for many individuals, and existing pharmacological interventions often carry side-effects such as drowsiness,” explained Dr Qizong Yue of Southwest University, China, corresponding author of the article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. “Music represents a non-invasive, low-cost, and personalized intervention strategy.”
For those who get carsick, there’s nothing worse-and feeling tense in anticipation of possible sickness can trigger a physical reaction, bringing sickness on more quickly. Because music can be used to alleviate tension, Yue and his team wondered if it could help people who get carsick.
The researchers started by developing a model to induce motion sickness. They recruited 40 participants to screen routes on a driving simulator and select the best route for making people feel carsick. They then screened a group of participants for their previous susceptibility to carsickness and selected 30 who reported moderate levels of past carsickness.
These participants wore electroencephalogram (EEG) caps, to try to identify quantifiable signals of carsickness in the brain’s activity. They were divided into six groups — four that received a music intervention, one that received no music, and one whose simulators were stopped when they started to report that they might feel slightly carsick. The last group acted as a comparative sample for the EEG data. They’d received the same stimuli as the other 25 participants, but weren’t allowed to become nauseous, so the difference between their brain activity and the other participants’ should help identify signals characteristic of carsickness.
First, the participants sat still in the simulator for a few minutes to capture baseline EEG signals from their brains. Then they performed a driving task and reported their level of carsickness to the scientists. Once they stopped driving, the participants in the music groups were played music for 60 seconds, and then asked to report how sick they felt.
All in your head?
The scientists found that joyful music alleviated carsickness the most, reducing it by 57.3%, very closely followed by soft music, at 56.7%. Passionate music reduced motion sickness by 48.3%, while playing sad music turned out to be slightly less effective than doing nothing. The control group reported a reduction of carsickness symptoms by 43.3% after their rest, while those who listened to sad music reported a reduction of only 40%.
The EEG data, meanwhile, showed that participants’ brain activity in the occipital lobe changed when they reported carsickness. The EEG measured less complex activity in this brain region when participants said they felt quite sick. The better recovering participants said they felt, the more the activity measured by the EEG returned to normal levels. It’s possible that soft music relaxes people, relieving tension which exacerbates carsickness, while joyful music might distract people by activating brain reward systems. Sad music could have the opposite effect, by amplifying negative emotions and increasing overall discomfort.
However, the scientists pointed out that further work is needed to confirm these results. “The primary limitation of this study is its relatively small sample size,” explained Yue. “This constraint results in limited statistical power.”
More research with larger samples will be needed to validate EEG patterns as a quantitative indicator of motion sickness, and to improve our understanding of the impact of music on motion sickness. The researchers also call for studies under real-life conditions, which could impact the brain differently compared to simulated roads. They plan to follow up these experiments with investigations of different forms of travel-sickness and the role played by personal musical taste.
“Based on our conclusions, individuals experiencing motion sickness symptoms during travel can listen to cheerful or gentle music to achieve relief,” said Yue. “The primary theoretical frameworks for motion sickness genesis apply broadly to sickness induced by various vehicles. Therefore, the findings of this study likely extend to motion sickness experienced during air or sea travel.”
Reference:
Yilun Li, Bangbei Tang, Qizong Yue, A study on the mitigating effect of different music types on motion sickness based on EEG analysis, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1636109.
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