A unique sound alleviates motion sickness
60 comments
·April 19, 2025bhaney
laserbeam
I first found it hilarious that there are 9 authors for a 10 person experiment, but I double checked.
There are multiple experiments with 82 total participants. One of those experiments does indeed have a sample size of 10.
Yup, this is still “wait and see”. For these kinds of papers my stance is: “cool read, I won’t click the share button”.
janalsncm
We don’t need a peer reviewed study to test it out.
pipes
Should I have been able to hear something? I feel like my ears need popped now
tgv
It's a sine (or sine-like) sound at a low pitch (around G2). Our ears aren't great at those frequencies, and the speaker you use might be bad at that range too. It's a bass frequency, but most bass sounds have a lot of overtones, which makes them sound clearer than the fundamental.
fragmede
Under capitalism, what do you want? If you went and put in a bunch of your own time, money, and effort into something, is asking for something back so you can put food on the table so reprehensible? I mean, I'd love it if I were independently wealthy and could go off and do a mission like that and just give it away for free, but some of us didn't get a trust fund and have bills to pay and so, is that really so ridiculous?
therobot24
That's why you use gov to fund reliable research, collective money funding collective good of knowledge
energy123
IP rights are a government legal construction. Legal constructions should be designed to best serve a societal purpose. In this case, a careful balance between the need to preserve incentive, and the need to prevent the many downsides associated with IP protection.
esseph
You cannot have a government with a high interest and stake in national security without bringing up all of those 16 identified "critical infrastructure sectors" with you.
CVEs are almost a starting point of truth. The threats can be verified, tested against/for, etc.
They're also tied up in insurance liabilities.
If there are no CVEs, there will be no cyber security insurance.
Follow the rabbit hole.
jMyles
> is that really so ridiculous?
Using the heavy hand of the state to threaten violence against people who make a particular tone... yes that is really so ridiculous.
The tone is question is quite close to G2. So, if your guitar is slightly sharp, you'll be making this tone when playing one of the most common chords.
borski
Nobody is threatening violence against you for playing your guitar sharp. I have no idea where violence even came into play here.
It’s a registered trademark. A registered trademark is a legal designation that provides exclusive rights to a brand name, logo, or other distinctive symbol used to identify a specific product or service; they registered Spice Sound or whatever as a trademark.
They did not patent 100Hz.
You would only be liable if you walked around playing your sharp guitar with a sign that said “Get your Spice Sound here” heh
I’m not defending it, and it reminds me of that woman in Baltimore who pissed everyone off by trademarking “Hon”, causing the whole city to revolt against her.
But it’s far from “threatening violence,” and they’re not patenting the sound.
adammarples
If I discovered that oxygen cured diabetes I couldn't just patent oxygen. This is a discovery (if it ever holds up) that a sound makes you feel a certain way, the authors didn't invent anything
borski
That’s why they didn’t patent it. They registered the 100Hz specific tone as a trademark.
crotho
Getting paid for work in not capitalism. Capitalism is a private person owning the work someone else does that they put up the capital for.
georgeburdell
Is using a 100Hz tone to alleviate motion sickness not patent worthy? Does not seem obvious.
jawns
This is a university press release, so they first refer to a registered trademark, which I assume means they're trying to make money off it through licensing agreements:
> a unique sound called 'sound spice®'
Only at the very bottom of the release do they actually give any technical details:
> a pure tone at 100 Hz
The linked study gives more details:
> 1-min exposure to a pure tone of 80–85 dBZ (= 60.9–65.9 dBA) at 100 Hz
CoastalCoder
Why bother with a psychoacoustic measure like dBA or dBZ for a pure sine wave?
lamename
Probably because dB SPL doesn't match A-weighted human perceptual audiogram, so they're being specific? (I get that you could just translate it to dB SPL but still.)
akdor1154
Yeah, nice. Easy enough to self-test, Android signal generator apps are readily available. I wonder if the optimal tone varies with body shape/size?
diggan
Kind of feel like it'll be hard to replicate the volume accurately, even when assuming headphones. The maximum output would depend both on the phone itself and the headphones. Wonder how specific it would have to be, if you'll get the same results with different volumes.
nandomrumber
> 60.9–65.9 dBA
That's about the level of normal human speech.
behringer
Should be real easy with a cheap sound meter off of Ali express.
nandomrumber
Many people could probably hum a 100hz tone.
shinycode
How would I know if I did it right ?
mcherm
This seems quite promising: an effective treatment for a problem that frequently assails many people, and a treatment which is so simple and easy to apply.
In fact, it seems so promising, that it raises my hackles of suspicion. I would very much like to see other researchers replicate this. I am automatically more skeptical than I would be of most research because if humming a certain note were an effective treatment for motion sickness, then it would be rather surprising that people had not already discovered this property -- possibly just by listening to various pieces of music.
Just as research which suggests a surprising outcome or one inconsistent with existing theories must meet a higher bar, so too does research which suggests a simple cure that it was already possible for people to stumble across.
temp0826
I was on a ROUGH ferry ride between some islands in Southeast Asia once. It was packed and nearly everyone succumbed to puking. Even if it's minimally effective, I feel like playing this over the speakers in the common areas would have been welcomed.
nandomrumber
If a specific tone can decrease the incidence of nausea and vomiting I wouldn't be surprised if rough seas combined with typical diesel engine sounds (frequency / harmonics - whatever the correct terminology is) increases the incidence of nausea and vomiting.
Geee
Afaik this isn't a new idea. This has been studied previously in the context of VR motion sickness.[0] There is a company called Otolith Labs making these kind of devices.[1] They seem to have pivoted from VR to curing chronic vertigo.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...
lambdaone
So quite literally mains hum, at least in countries with 50 Hz systems, since the magnetostriction effect makes the second harmonic dominant.
hengheng
Ah, the calming sound of a power supply humming in the background.
jpmattia
Who would have thought that a power supply hum could be so annoying as to make people forget to be carsick.
null
bombela
So that's the reason for all those old honda civics cars full of speakers with windows shaking bass!
They are just trying to alleviate motion sickness from those old suspensions.
jedimastert
For those not wanting to click through a bunch of links, here is a quote of the results of the study. TL;DR a sine wave of 100Hz at conversation level.
> Results: The effect of short-term (≤5 min) exposure to a pure tone of 80–85 dBZ (= 60.9–65.9 dBA) at 100 Hz on motion sickness was investigated in mice and humans. A mouse study showed a long-lasting (≥120 min) alleviative effect on shaking-mediated exacerbated beam test scores by 5-min exposure to a pure tone of 85 dBZ at 100 Hz, which was ex vivo determined as a sound activating vestibular function, before shaking. Human studies further showed that 1-min exposure to a pure tone of 80–85 dBZ (= 60.9–65.9 dBA) at 100 Hz before shaking improved the increased envelope areas in posturography caused by the shakings of a swing, a driving simulator and a vehicle. Driving simulator-mediated activation of sympathetic nerves assessed by the heart rate variable (HRV) and vehicle-mediated increased scores of the MSAQ were improved by pure tone exposure before the shaking.
RossBencina
I'm curious about how to explain 100 Hz working for both mice and humans. I would not have expected the same frequency for animals of such different sizes (and different vocal frequency ranges).
modeless
My friend has pretty extreme motion sickness that prevents us from taking boats or buses or even sometimes taxis when traveling together. It's kind of debilitating and not that uncommon I think. More effort ought to be put into finding a cure. (I'm skeptical of this one, but worth a shot I guess.) Would be nice for VR as well.
zoklet-enjoyer
Low dose THC edible might help your friend.
For mild motion sickness from VR, I like to chew ginger root. Ginger candies are good too, especially if you don't like straight ginger root.
dataviz1000
Design motor yacht engines to produce 100hz sound for an extra selling point.
tempestn
Probably entirely placebo, but I just spun in my office chair until dizzy then pulled up a 100Hz tone, and as soon as it started playing the dizziness dropped noticeably. Again, I would guess placebo, but hey, if it works. Gotta try it on reading in the car...
kbrkbr
So I'm not alone falling sick trying to read in a moving car after all?
ec109685
So common it was even in the article:
“Even a single minute of stimulation reduced the staggering and discomfort felt by people that read in a moving vehicle”
IshKebab
"Am I the only one that <extremely common thing>?"
kazinator
A couple of years ago I discovered being able to make a headache go away by humming low notes, at frequencies that make my head resonate and teeth chatter.
Unblinded, tiny sample size (n=10), and a ridiculous attempt to trademark a pure 100Hz tone.
I'm gonna wait for a much better study reproducing this before I put any stock in it, personally.