[HN Gopher] A unique sound alleviates motion sickness
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A unique sound alleviates motion sickness
Author : miles
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-04-19 22:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nagoya-u.ac.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nagoya-u.ac.jp)
| 14 wrote:
| Hope this works and VR games start playing it before motion
| intense parts of the games. I have built up a tolerance for the
| most part but some games just leave me motion sick if I am not
| careful.
| hengheng wrote:
| Ah, the calming sound of a power supply humming in the
| background.
| jpmattia wrote:
| Who would have thought that a power supply hum could be so
| annoying as to make people forget to be carsick.
| jawns wrote:
| 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(r)'
|
| 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
| akdor1154 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| behringer wrote:
| Should be real easy with a cheap sound meter off of Ali
| express.
| K0balt wrote:
| Unless you live in the USA, in which case that sound
| meter now costs X+$100 if it gets here before June,
| x+$200 if it gets here in june or later lol.
|
| But that's fine, you can get an American made one for
| about ....hmm. Can't seem to find one actually made in
| the USA that doesn't say "contact us for a quote" or
| something like that.
|
| I'm all for repatriating manufacturing, and a good plan
| might very well involve tariffs rolled in progressively
| over several years, giving businesses a predictable time
| table to shift supply chains and invest in manufacturing
| capacity to fill those gaps.
|
| But all that has happened is the price of American
| innovation just went through the roof for small companies
| and startups, while big businesses will barely be
| affected because the cost of gadgets and parts is
| negligible as a fraction of their R&D budget. For many
| startups it's nearly 100 percent.
|
| Chaos is not good for business and multiplies risks at
| their root, which gets magnified by orders of magnitude
| in financial terms when looking at investment and
| finance.
|
| 100:1 bets with 1000:1 odds just becomes 100:1 bets with
| 100:1 odds, a bet no longer worth taking.
|
| Sad.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| There are free phone apps for that
| K0balt wrote:
| Yes, wildly inaccurate ones in most cases. The Apple
| Watch has a comparatively well calibrated sound pressure
| meter though. (Made in China, obviously)
| madhacker wrote:
| Let the MAGA fanatics eat cake and bittermelon. Decision
| has consequences.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| You can get a fine spl meter on Amazon or get my favorite
| which is the old Radio Shack one with a needle meter on
| eBay. Probably about $20-25.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > 60.9-65.9 dBA
|
| That's about the level of normal human speech.
| jerf wrote:
| If this works at all I seriously doubt it only works within
| a .2 dB range or something.
|
| Just because a study tested only one particular point in a
| space does not mean only that point has whatever properties
| they found in the study.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Many people could probably hum a 100hz tone.
| shinycode wrote:
| How would I know if I did it right ?
| danaris wrote:
| Just have perfect pitch! That should be no problem,
| right? .....right??
| danparsonson wrote:
| Your motion sickness would feel better
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Why bother with a psychoacoustic measure like dBA or dBZ for a
| _pure sine wave_?
| lamename wrote:
| 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.)
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note
| jraby3 wrote:
| To save a click:
|
| "The brown note (sometimes brown tone or frequency) is a
| hypothetical infrasonic frequency capable of causing fecal
| incontinence by creating acoustic resonance in the human bowel.
| Considered an urban myth, the name is a metonym for the common
| color of human faeces. Attempts to demonstrate the existence of
| a "brown note" using sound waves transmitted through the air
| have failed. Frequencies supposedly involved are between 5 and
| 9 Hz, which are below the lower frequency limit of human
| hearing. High-power sound waves below 20 Hz are felt in the
| body."
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| That's disgusting
| lambdaone wrote:
| So quite literally mains hum, at least in countries with 50 Hz
| systems, since the magnetostriction effect makes the second
| harmonic dominant.
| phkahler wrote:
| So piano music with a droning G chord for a minute.
| tgv wrote:
| That has a lot of overtones. If this is truly based on some
| weird psycho-acoustic effect, a piano tone might not work.
| bhaney wrote:
| 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.
| janalsncm wrote:
| We don't need a peer reviewed study to test it out.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdi0jQtMqV8&pp
| thesparks wrote:
| Am I the only one who started to feel a bit nauseous
| listening to this? I'm serious.
| pomian wrote:
| That may be a good thing. Most of the seasickness drugs
| make you queasy, if you don't go out on a rolling sea after
| taking them.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Uh...no...
|
| It would be completely bonkers for an antiemetic to
| commonly induce an emetic urge in any but rare
| exceptional cases.
|
| Most seasickness drugs are just first-generation
| antihistamines sometimes combined with a caffeine
| analogue to counteract the sleepiness.
|
| Dramamine/Gravol (dimenhydrinate) is just benadryl
| (diphenhydramine) plus the caffeine analogue
| theophylline.
|
| Bonine/DramamineII (meclizine) is also a first-generation
| antihistamine.
|
| Promethazine is also a first-generation antihistamine.
|
| Non-antihistamine antiemetics like ondansetron or
| scopolamine transdermal patches require a prescription
| from a doctor and therefore aren't commonly used for
| motion sickness except for occupational seafarers. And it
| would still be absolutely stupid if the drugs given to
| prevent nausea commonly caused nausea.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Why would it be stupid? You are concentrating on the
| vomiting part but aren't other sensations related to
| motion sickness like shaky balance that drugs could help
| out with?
| OJFord wrote:
| Not to mention the possibility of triggering a response
| that the trigger would help combat if you already
| exhibited the response. Or it simply being an uncommon
| side effect that it's made worse. Headaches and nausea
| are listed in possible side effects for just about
| everything, because if anyone reports it they have to
| list it since the possibility of causality hasn't been
| ruled out.
| dcow wrote:
| Does that mean when death is listed that somebody died
| during the trial?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _You are concentrating on the vomiting part_
|
| The nausea part. The person I'm replying to specifically
| said "queasy".
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| I think it's not uncommon for a drug treating some
| condition with some symptom to have a potential side
| effect that worsens that symptom. When you start playing
| with some set of receptors, it's possible something goes
| too far or, for whatever reason, not far enough and now
| we're worse off
|
| See: antidepressants can increase suicidal ideation,
| cannabis (used for nausea) can cause nausea at higher
| doses, etc.
| xico wrote:
| As an occasional user, can confirm that motion sickness
| pills (e.g. Cinnarizine, one of the most used in the
| British Navy) make dizzy, some more than other, and that
| it's still much better overall than not taking them.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _I think it's not uncommon for a drug treating some
| condition with some symptom to have a potential side
| effect that worsens that symptom._
|
| I think you're making the error of conflating
| probabilities here. It's not uncommon for drugs to have
| uncommon side effects, but those side effects are still
| uncommon. Every once in a while benadryl makes a person
| paradoxically excited, but most people who take benadryl
| get sleepy.
| Angostura wrote:
| it made me feel slightly uneasy. Brains are weird
| pipes wrote:
| Should I have been able to hear something? I feel like my
| ears need popped now
| tgv wrote:
| 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.
| pipes wrote:
| Thanks
| marci wrote:
| and to test it here (it might be very loud!):
|
| CTRL+SHIFT+I and in the console let o,
| a=new AudioContext();
| document.addEventListener("mousedown",function(){
| if (o) {o.stop(); o = undefined} else{
| o=a.createOscillator(); o.type="sine"; o.frequency.value=100;
| o.connect(a.destination);o.start()} })
|
| If you click anywhere it will start/stop.
| skykooler wrote:
| It sounds like a pitch that you might hear from an airplane
| propeller, which leads to the question why airsickness
| exists if the antidote is ambiently present?
| fragmede wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's why you use gov to fund reliable research, collective
| money funding collective good of knowledge
| crotho wrote:
| 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.
| jMyles wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > 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.
|
| And what happens to you if you don't abide by the legal
| protections of the trademark? The government must
| ultimately use violence or the threat of violence to
| enforce its rules.
| Angostura wrote:
| That's not how audio trademarks work. A sound trademark
| can represent a product (think Intel jiggle, MGM lion
| roar) but it can't _be_ the product.
|
| So in this case I suppose they might be able to Trademark
| 'Antivomotone' as a word mark to describe the tone, but
| no-one is going to be able to trademark the tone itself.
| esseph wrote:
| 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.
| energy123 wrote:
| 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.
| adammarples wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's why they didn't patent it. They registered the 100Hz
| specific tone as a trademark.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Is using a 100Hz tone to alleviate motion sickness not patent
| worthy? Does not seem obvious.
| laserbeam wrote:
| 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".
| gus_massa wrote:
| Double blind randomized controlled trial or it didn't happen.
| The subjects have to fill a form. It's common that people want
| to be nice and lie a little. Also, the exitement of the
| experiment may make them less focused in the problem, or there
| may be many other additional effects that are dificult to
| control. A DBRCT minimize them.
| siddbudd wrote:
| The participating mice also wanted to be nice and lied to the
| scientists, as they kept them well fed.
| mcherm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| When I've felt nauseous on boats it has _felt_ like the
| thrum (ie deep pitched vibration with sound) of the engines
| has contributed to that. Also, when you can smell the
| engines it doesn't seem to help.
| jedimastert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| What other frequencies did they try? Maybe there are better
| frequencies (or combinations) but they haven't tested for
| that yet??
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Design motor yacht engines to produce 100hz sound for an extra
| selling point.
| modeless wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bombela wrote:
| 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.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Who has the mp3 medicine?
| Geee wrote:
| 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...
|
| [1] https://otolithlabs.com/nvrt-technology/
| tempestn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So I'm not alone falling sick trying to read in a moving car
| after all?
| ec109685 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "Am I the only one that <extremely common thing>?"
| kazinator wrote:
| 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.
| hrtk wrote:
| If it's a sound, it should come with a play button
| 8474_s wrote:
| How its exactly 100hz? Nature doesn't follow arbitrary measures,
| its likely the approximations of some nearby frequency in range
| that has maximal effect(likely something resonating in inner ear
| mechanisms)
| teekert wrote:
| Story time: My parents bought an anti motion sickness thing. It
| was a rubber band with metal core hanging from the car's chassis
| to the ground.
|
| It worked for my brother! But at some point I asked my parents:
| but how can this work then!? What does it do with "motion "?
|
| My parents told me to be silent and later, when my brother
| couldn't hear, told me it was just to release static electricity
| but they told my brother it was against motion sickness and him
| believing that made it work for him.
|
| At the time this was pretty shocking to me.
| begueradj wrote:
| It's the same when it comes to medication: if you believe it
| will help you, there is a big chance you will heal even
| quicker. Trusting the doctor who prescribed the medication also
| plays a role in healing.
| snailmailman wrote:
| The ability of pure placebo to _actually work_ quite often is
| _crazy_ to me.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Wow this is an amazing discovery that could help so many people.
| AirPod app?
| mikewarot wrote:
| 100 Hertz might work fine in Japan and Europe, but I bet 120
| Hertz is the magic note here in the US. 8)
|
| Doing this airborne would of course require an 800, 1200 or even
| 2400 Hhz tone depending on if the power supply was 2, 3 or 6
| phase.
|
| /S - yes, it's a joke about DC power supply ripple
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