Listening to the right music may be able to help conquer carsickness, according to a recent study from China. Scientists induced motion sickness in participants using a driving simulator, then played different kinds of music while they tried to recover.

Participants listening to joyful or soft music reported feeling better than participants listening to passionate music, while sad music resulted in a less effective recovery than not listening to any music. The scientists also found that participants’ experience of motion sickness was reflected in electroencephalogram (EEG) data, pointing to a potential future quantitative measure of motion sickness.

For the study, the researchers developed a model to induce motion sickness and recruited 30 participants who reported moderate levels of past carsickness. Participants were divided into six groups —  four that received a music intervention, one that received no music, and a control group whose simulators were stopped when they started to report that they might feel slightly carsick.

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 listened to music for 60 seconds, and then asked to report how sick they felt.

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 EEG data showed that participants’ brain activity changed when they reported carsickness. The EEG measured less complex activity 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 that exacerbates carsickness, while joyful music might distract people by activating brain reward systems, the authors speculated. Sad music could have the opposite effect, by amplifying negative emotions and increasing overall discomfort. Future research will include larger numbers of participants to confirm the results.

To download the study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, click here