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New relief for motion sickness

https://newatlas.com/medical-tech/sound-spice-tone-motion-sickness/

[snip]

Motion sickness occurs when the movement that we see with our eyes and/or sense with our muscles and joints doesn't match up with the movement sensed by our inner ear.

This disconnect affects our sense of balance, resulting in unpleasant reactions such as dizziness, nausea and fatigue. And while preemptively taking certain medications can help stop this from happening, they don't always work that well. That's where the tone comes in.

Previous studies already suggested that using sound to stimulate the inner ear's fluid-filled utricle cavity may assist in maintaining a sense of balance. Takumi Kagawa, Masashi Kato and colleagues at Japan's Nagoya University set about exploring that theory further, by observing how tones of different frequencies and loudnesses activated the vestibular (balance-maintaining) function of extracted mouse utricles.

The tone that worked best had a frequency of 100 hertz and a loudness of 65.9 dBa (A-weighted decibels). It has been trademarked as "sound spice."

[snip]

Human test subjects showed a similar response after just one minute of listening to the tone, before being subjected to prolonged movement in a swing, a driving simulator, and an actual car traveling on the road. Electrocardiography and posturography analysis showed that an untreated control group of volunteers didn't fare nearly as well.

"Our study demonstrated that short-term stimulation using a unique sound called 'sound spice' alleviates symptoms of motion sickness, such as nausea and dizziness," says Kagawa. "The effective sound level falls within the range of everyday environmental noise exposure, suggesting that the sound technology is both effective and safe."

Posted by
6058 posts

So... there will be an app for that? Sign me up. Would be interesting to see if the average phone can produce sound at that low of a level. I mean, that is REALLY low, like the lowest notes from a male bass singer.

Posted by
405 posts

"Would be interesting to see if the average phone can produce sound at that low of a level"

It's not the phone. That's no problem. It's the earphones. High end earphones can do it but it might take those "over the ear" ones to get down that low.

And the connection. The old "phonejack" could put that signal out to headphones but since everyone's taking those away I don't know if the bluetooth connection can do it though I can't think of any reason why not.

edit: And you don't have to wait for an "App". There are programs that can make tones. Getting good earphones and some way to get the right level out would be the issues.

edit2: Just realized, by "phone ...produce sound" you probably meant the speaker(s) in a phone. And yes, they won't do it but I've seen higher end headphones spec'd down below 100Hz.

Posted by
262 posts

That is really interesting. Unfortunately, I don't suffer motion sickness, but I am pretty geeky...

I have an Android phone app called Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite Pro, which can create an audio tone, and the frequency can be set to 100 hz. I have a set of inexpensive bluetooth earbuds from Hypergear, So I generated a 100 hz. sinewave tone, paired the earbuds and I could hear the 100 hz.

The Toolbox app can produce sinewave, square wave, sawtooth, or triangle wave. You could try all four and see if one works better. And experiment with adjusting the volume.

Anybody out there making apps? Maybe you could make a 100 hz. app and sell it...

Posted by
405 posts

Yes. There are many phone programs that can make tones. I'd look at the paper referenced in the article to see how sensitive the effect is to the amplitude. Could be it just has to be the mentioned loudness or louder. Much easier to do.