Can sad songs make motion sickness feel worse?

Road trips are way more fun when you’ve got music playing. Whether it’s everyone singing along or just listening quietly, music makes the ride better. But if you get motion sickness, the trip can quickly turn uncomfortable with nausea, dizziness, and all that unpleasant stuff. But did you know that the type of music you play in your car can influence motion sickness, making it better or worse?

A study published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience confirmed this. The genre of music can determine how severe your motion sickness feels.

Which music you choose matters

The goal of the study was to determine whether listening to certain kinds of music in a car can affect how queasy you feel. It turns out that sad music worsens motion sickness, while joyful tunes and gentle, soft music actually reduce symptoms like nausea and dizziness by more than half.

Based on the findings, the researchers revealed that motion sickness symptoms go down by 56.7 percent with soft tunes, while joyful music leads to a 57.3 percent drop. Stirring music also performed fairly well, with a 48.3 percent reduction. In other words, the right music can cut motion sickness by half.

Motion sickness naturally stops when the motion stops, i.e., when the car halts, with a recovery rate of 43.3 percent. But sad music slows recovery, lowering the rate to 40 percent. This means if you don’t listen to any music, the body recovers on its own, faster than if you were listening to sad songs.

Why do joyful tunes help?

Happy tunes help calm your brain and change how it reacts to motion sickness.

Often, music choice is a matter of personal preference. On cranky days, you might belt out metal or punk rock. Likewise, when you feel particularly low, you’re more likely to turn to melancholic tunes, as songs often mirror emotions. But according to the researchers, this is not ideal for car rides, especially if you’re prone to motion sickness.

The researchers found that the occipital lobe slows down when people are ill, but joyful music helps it resume its regular activity. In this way, music can directly influence how your brain reacts to motion sickness.