The Type Of Music That Can Stop Motion Sickness In Its Tracks

There's nothing that can ruin a road trip or a day out on the water more quickly than motion sickness. If you're someone who gets queasy on winding roads or rolling seas, don't despair. You don't have to give up this type of travel altogether. Along with over-the-counter medication like Dramamine, ginger is a good natural remedy to help reduce motion sickness, and there's even a helpful iPhone feature that can do the trick. But researchers have found one more tool for you to use: soft music, which can help alleviate the effects of motion sickness.

A study published in September 2025 in the scientific journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience looked at four types of music — "joyful, sad, stirring, and soft" — and how they impacted subjects who were experiencing motion sickness. It turns out that soft music reduced the effects of motion sickness by 56.7%, while joyful music reduced it by 57.3%. Sad music, perhaps unsurprisingly, was less effective than "natural recovery methods" used by the control group.  

The subjects in the study were placed in a driving simulator that was designed to induce motion sickness as researchers collected electroencephalogram data. Participants then listened to one minute of the different music types while the researchers looked at how their brains responded. As for why it would be that soft music might help, the study theorized that "the soothing rhythm of soft music may reduce the symptoms of nausea and dizziness associated with motion sickness by modulating the autonomic nervous system and reducing sympathetic excitability." In other words, soft music helps calm you down.

Joyful music, on the other hand, seemed to help subjects fight motion sickness for an entirely different reason. It was thought to be more "distracting" with the music providing a "rhythmic motivational effect, which elevates emotional states by activating brain reward systems," according to the study authors. The study was far from perfect or definitive, however. Researchers did acknowledge that it was conducted with a relatively small sample size, for one. Furthermore, the study did not specify how the music was categorized into the four types used on participants, nor whether the music was instrumental or lyrical. 

But if you're someone who often gets sick in cars, it's definitely worth putting together a motion sickness playlist with this advice in mind to see if it works for you. The study also noted previous research indicating that passengers are more likely to feel the effects of motion sickness compared to drivers. So, perhaps counterintuitively, you might want to have the person in your travel group who gets motion sickness be the driver. Of course, if you feel so sick that you wouldn't be able to drive safely, skip that one! And if you're on a boat, you might want to skip reading to avoid seasickness.