Suffer from car sickness? Researchers have found that playing different types of music may help people recover more effectively.
Listening to happy music could help you recover faster in comparison to sad music, according to scientists studying ways of improving motion sickness.
Using a specially calibrated driving simulator, they induced car sickness in participants and then played different types of music while they tried to recover.
Soft and joyful music produced the best recovery effects, while sad music was less effective than doing nothing at all.
“Motion sickness significantly impairs the travel experience for many individuals, and existing pharmacological interventions often carry side-effects such as drowsiness,” said Dr Qizong Yue of Southwest University in China, author of the article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
“Music represents a non-invasive, low-cost, and personalised intervention strategy.”
Those who get car sick often feel tense, which can bring nausea on faster. But because music can alleviate tension, researchers decided to see if music could help people who get motion sickness.
Researchers recruited 40 participants to test routes on a driving simulator and select the ones that made them feel the most unwell – 30 people who reported moderate levels were then chosen.
These participants wore electroencephalogram (EEG) caps to try to identify signals of motion sickness in the brain’s activity.
They 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 they might feel slightly sick.
The participants first sat still in the driving simulator to capture their baseline signals from their brains. They were then asked to do a driving task and report their level of nausea.
Once they stopped driving four of the groups listened to music for a minute and then reported again how sick they felt.
Joyful music reduced motion sickness the most, reducing it by 57.3 per cent, very closely followed by soft music, at 56.7 per cent. Passionate music reduced car sickness by 48.3 per cent, while playing sad music turned out to be slightly less effective than doing nothing.
The control group reported a reduction of symptoms by 43.3 per cent after their rest, while those who listened to sad music reported a reduction of only 40 per cent.
The EEG data revealed the participant’s brain activity and the part of the brain responsible for vision – the occipital lobe – showed activity when they reported feeling sick. This activity returned to normal when participants said they felt better.
“Based on our conclusions, individuals experiencing motion sickness symptoms during travel can listen to cheerful or gentle music to achieve relief,” added Dr 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.”
The study authors explained that it is possible soft music relaxes people, relieving tension which exacerbates car sickness, 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 on a larger number of participants is needed to confirm these results.
