Pleasant music helps ease motion sickness...Sad music isn't as effective as not listening
Sep 03, 2025
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This is the result of a study by a Chinese research team recently published in the international journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
The most difficult thing for people who suffer from car sickness is the tension they feel in anticipation, and it is known that such anxiety actually triggers a physical reaction to cause car sickness faster. Based on this, the research team, which noted that music can help ease tension, analyzed the effects of various music on relieving motion sickness through EEG (brain wave) signals.
After artificially inducing motion sickness in 30 participants through a driving simulator, the research team played various music types and compared the symptom relief effect, and as a result, pleasant music and soft music showed 57.3% and 56.7%, respectively. Passionate music also worked to some extent, but it was relatively low at 48.3%. On the other hand, sad music had the lowest symptom relief effect at 40%, and was lower than the control group (43.3%) who did not listen to music.
Brain wave data showed that the activity complexity of the occipital lobe was greatly reduced when motion sickness was felt, while the better the recovery, the better the EEG activity returned to normal level. The researchers analyzed that soft music relieves tension, and enjoyable music activates the brain compensation system to reduce motion sickness. On the other hand, it is analyzed that sad music can amplify negative emotions and affect the worsening of motion sickness.
The research team said that the study has a small number of samples and a limitation of a laboratory environment, so follow-up studies on a larger scale and in real situations are needed. In addition, he said he is planning to study individual music tastes and the effects of motion sickness relief in various means of transportation. "If you have symptoms of motion sickness while traveling, listening to pleasant or gentle music can help relieve symptoms.", he suggested.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
