Motion sickness is a frustrating travel companion. Whether you’re reading in a car, riding a bus, or sitting in a self-driving vehicle, that familiar dizziness and nausea can quickly ruin your day. While medications and sensory tricks are common solutions, new research suggests that your playlist might also be a powerful tool.
A study published today, September 3, 2025, in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience explored how different genres of music affect motion sickness recovery. The findings? Joyful and soft music significantly helped participants feel better, while sad music actually made things worse—even compared to no music at all.
Researchers from a collaborative team in China recruited 30 participants and used a highly realistic driving simulator (complete with a steering wheel, pedals, and a surround-sound system) to induce motion sickness.
Once participants started to feel queasy, they were asked to recover while listening to one of four music types:
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Joyful music
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Soft music
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Stirring (passionate) music
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Sad music
A control group had no music at all.
While participants reported their feelings, researchers also measured their brain activity using EEG (electroencephalography). This allowed them to build a machine learning model to objectively track changes in motion sickness severity.
Joyful music reduced motion sickness severity by 57.3%, and soft music by 56.7%, making both highly effective in helping participants recover.
Surprisingly, sad music reduced discomfort by only 40%, which was less effective than sitting quietly without music (43.3%). The emotional weight of sad tunes likely deepened feelings of discomfort.
Stirring music helped somewhat (48.3% improvement), but wasn’t as consistently beneficial as joyful or soft music.
EEG Confirmed the Link
The researchers used a neural network model to analyze brainwave data, achieving 85.6% accuracy in detecting motion sickness states. They found that a brain activity measure called Kolmogorov–Chaitin (KC) complexity in the occipital lobe (the brain’s visual center) strongly correlated with sickness severity.
Music doesn’t just entertain—it can change your brain state.
Soft music may calm the nervous system, reducing dizziness by lowering stress and balancing sensory signals.
Joyful music might distract from discomfort by activating reward centers in the brain, lifting mood and reducing nausea.
Sad music, however, can intensify negative feelings, amplifying discomfort instead of soothing it.
With autonomous driving technology advancing rapidly, more passengers will spend travel time reading, working, or watching videos rather than focusing on the road. This shift could make motion sickness more common, making solutions like real-time, music-based interventions especially valuable.
The study even suggests future in-car systems could monitor brain activity or physiological signals to detect motion sickness early and automatically adjust music playback to help passengers recover faster.
While this research offers exciting insight, it’s still early days. The study used a small group of participants and a driving simulator rather than real-world conditions, so more work is needed to confirm its findings on the road.
Still, there’s no harm in experimenting with your own motion sickness soundtrack. Next time your stomach churns on a winding road, slip on your headphones—skip the ginger candies for a moment—and try letting music work its magic.
Go for gentle, calming pieces like The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns or Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 to soothe your senses. Or, if you’d rather boost your mood and distract yourself from queasiness, opt for bright, cheerful classics like Benny Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing or Louis Armstrong’s On the Sunny Side of the Street.
Your perfect playlist might just become your best travel companion.
REFERENCE
Li Y, Li Y, Li Y, Luo B, Tang B and Yue Q (2025) A study on the mitigating effect of different music types on motion sickness based on EEG analysis. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 19:1636109. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1636109
Other musical suggestions
River Flow in You: orchestral version on youtube
Sheep may safely graze: on youtube
Clair de Lune, Claude Debussy
Weightless , Marconi Union
Spiegel im Spiegel, Arvo Pärt
Ambient 1: Music for Airports, Brian Eno
Elegia - New Order
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