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Citizen Scientists Spot a Perfect Extragalactic Venn Diagram
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Citizen Scientists Spot a Perfect Extragalactic Venn Diagram

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For lovers of cool astronomy and math, this finding is a real treat. Citizen astronomers stumbled upon not one but two rings of extragalactic radio signals crossing each other to form a near-perfect Venn diagram.

A paper published October 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies this strangely geometric object as an “odd radio circle” (ORC), vast rings of magnetized plasma. These rings, only visible at radio wavelengths, emit non-thermal synchrotron radiation. They’re also gigantic, typically spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years. Astronomers have only documented a small handful of cases, but this particular pair of rings is reportedly the most distant and most powerful so far.

What’s more, the researchers found two more powerful radio signals that offer valuable information about the dynamics of ORCs, first discovered six years ago.

“ORCs are among the most bizarre and beautiful cosmic structures we’ve ever seen—and they may hold vital clues about how galaxies and black holes co-evolve, hand-in-hand,” said Ananda Hota, study lead author and founder of the RAD@home Astronomy Collaboratory for citizen science research, in a statement.

An ongoing puzzle

As the name suggests, odd radio circles are only visible to radio telescopes, which operate at comparatively low frequencies. At other frequencies, or wavelengths, they become invisible—one reason they only recently came into view, owing to advances in radio astronomy.

Given their novelty, astronomers have yet to pinpoint an exact cause for odd radio circles. The handful of detections so far have suggested they could be shockwaves from merging galaxies or black holes, or even the remnants of supernovas. Either way, ORCs almost always materialize near large galaxies, hinting there should be some correlation between the two.

The new discovery raises another possibility. What if these rings are the product of “superwinds” compressing dormant radio lobes? Galactic superwinds can emerge from a variety of powerful extragalactic events, which could explain why past ORC observations had conflicting sources.

Many moving parts

The other two radio signals that the researchers found nearby also support this hypothesis. Specifically, these were two gigantic galaxies in a crowded galaxy cluster that were blasting out powerful jets of plasma and radio emissions. Their activity, coupled with the local environment, likely helped shape the rings, the researchers said.

Optical RGB image from the Legacy Surveys, overlaid with radio emission in red from the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS), showing the ‘odd radio circle’ (ORC) RAD J131346.9+500320. Credit: Rad@home Astronomy Collaboratory

“These discoveries show that ORCs and radio rings are not isolated curiosities,” noted Pratik Dabhade, study co-author and an astronomer at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Poland, in the statement. “They are part of a broader family of exotic plasma structures shaped by black hole jets, winds, and their environments.”

The signals were first detected by citizen scientists using the Low Frequency Array, a sensitive radio telescope based in Europe. Professional scientists associated with the RAD@home Astronomy Collaboratory helped assess and confirm the validity of their findings.

“The fact that citizen scientists uncovered them highlights the continued importance of human pattern recognition, even in the age of machine learning,” Dabhade added.



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Scientists Made Human Eggs from Skin Cells and Used Them to Form Embryos
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Scientists Made Human Eggs from Skin Cells and Used Them to Form Embryos

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“The biggest challenge is how to make this egg extrude half of its chromosomes—and the correct half,” Amato says. “We’re not quite there yet.” The team dubbed their technique “mitomeiosis” and is trying to better understand how chromosomes like to pair and how they segregate in order to find a way to experimentally induce those conditions.

The ability to make eggs and sperm in the lab—called in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG—has been a growing area of research in recent years.

In 2016, a group of Japanese researchers led by stem cell researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi reported that they produced healthy mouse pups after making mouse eggs entirely in a lab dish. Later, they generated mouse eggs using cells from males and as a result, created pups with two dads. Those advancements were achieved by reprogramming skin cells from adult mice into stem cells, then further coaxing them to develop into eggs and sperm.

Mitinori Saitou at Kyoto University first documented in 2018 how his team turned human blood cells into stem cells, which they then transformed into human eggs, but they were too immature to be fertilized to make embryos.

US startups Conception Biosciences, Ivy Natal, Gameto, and Ovelle Bio are all working on making eggs or sperm in a lab.

But the prospect raises significant ethical questions about how the technology should be used. In a 2017 editorial, bioethicists warned that IVG “may raise the specter of ‘embryo farming’ on a scale currently unimagined.” Conceivably, it could allow anyone at any age to have a child. And combined with advances in embryo screening, the fertility clinics of the future could use IVG to make mass numbers of embryos and then choose the ones with the most desirable qualities. Gene editing could also be used with IVG to snip out disease-causing DNA or create new traits.

Amato says it will likely take another decade of research before IVG could be deemed safe or effective enough to be tested in people. Even then, it’s unclear if the technique would be permitted in the US, since a Congressional rider forbids the Food and Drug Administration from considering clinical trials that involve genetically manipulating an embryo for the intention of creating a baby.

“Their method is very sophisticated and well-organized,” Hayashi, now a professor at the University of Osaka, says of the Oregon group’s approach. However, because of the high rate of chromosomal errors, “it is too inefficient and high risk to apply immediately to clinical application.”

Also, because their process requires donor eggs, it could limit its use as an infertility treatment. As more people turn to IVF to conceive, the demand for donor eggs is increasing, and using them can involve wait times.

Amander Clark, a reproductive scientist and stem cell biologist at UCLA who was not involved in the work, agrees that in its current form, mitomeiosis should not be offered for fertility care until more research is done. But in the meantime, the research has other uses.

“The technology of mitomeiosis is an important technical innovation and could be highly valuable to our understanding of the biology of meiosis in human eggs. Meiotic errors increase as women age. Therefore, understanding causes of meiotic errors is a critical area of research,” Clark says.



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Scientists Might Be Looking for Consciousness in the Wrong Part of the Brain
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Scientists Might Be Looking for Consciousness in the Wrong Part of the Brain

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What gives rise to human consciousness? Are some parts of the brain more important than others? Scientists began tackling these questions in more depth about 35 years ago. Researchers have made progress, but the mystery of consciousness remains very much alive.

In a recently published article, I reviewed over 100 years of neuroscience research to see if some brain regions are more important than others for consciousness. What I found suggests scientists who study consciousness may have been undervaluing the most ancient regions of human brains.

Consciousness is usually defined by neuroscientists as the ability to have subjective experience, such as the experience of tasting an apple or of seeing the redness of its skin. The leading theories of consciousness suggest that the outer layer of the human brain, called the cortex (in blue in figure 1), is fundamental to consciousness. This is mostly composed of the neocortex, which is newer in our evolutionary history.

Figure 1, the human brain (made with the assistance of AI).
Peter Coppola, CC BY-SA

The human subcortex (figure 1, brown/beige), underneath the neocortex, has not changed much in the last 500 million years. It is thought to be like electricity for a TV, necessary for consciousness, but not enough on its own.

There is another part of the brain that some neuroscientific theories of consciousness state is irrelevant for consciousness. This is the cerebellum, which is also older than the neocortex and looks like a little brain tucked in the back of the skull (figure 1, purple). Brain activity and brain networks are disrupted in unconsciousness (like in a coma). These changes can be seen in the cortex, subcortex, and cerebellum.

What brain stimulation reveals

As part of my analysis, I looked at studies showing what happens to consciousness when brain activity is changed, for example, by applying electrical currents or magnetic pulses to brain regions.

These experiments in humans and animals showed that altering activity in any of these three parts of the brain can alter consciousness. Changing the activity of the neocortex can change your sense of self, make you hallucinate, or affect your judgment.

Changing the subcortex may have extreme effects. We can induce depression, wake a monkey from anesthesia, or knock a mouse unconscious. Even stimulating the cerebellum, long considered irrelevant, can change your conscious sensory perception.

However, this research does not allow us to reach strong conclusions about where consciousness comes from, as stimulating one brain region may affect another region. Like unplugging the TV from the socket, we might be changing the conditions that support consciousness, but not the mechanisms of consciousness itself.

So I looked at some evidence from patients to see if it would help resolve this dilemma.

Damage from physical trauma or lack of oxygen to the brain can disrupt your experience. Injury to the neocortex may make you think your hand is not yours, fail to notice things on one side of your visual field, or become more impulsive.

People born without the cerebellum, or the front of their cortex, can still appear conscious and live quite normal lives. However, damaging the cerebellum later in life can trigger hallucinations or change your emotions completely.

Harm to the most ancient parts of our brain can directly cause unconsciousness (although some people recover) or death. However, like electricity for a TV, the subcortex may be just keeping the newer cortex “online,” which may be giving rise to consciousness. So I wanted to know whether, alternatively, there is evidence that the most ancient regions are sufficient for consciousness.

There are rare cases of children being born without most or all of their neocortex. According to medical textbooks, these people should be in a permanent vegetative state. However, there are reports that these people can feel upset, play, recognize people, or show enjoyment of music. This suggests that they are having some sort of conscious experience.

These reports are striking evidence that suggests maybe the oldest parts of the brain are enough for basic consciousness. Or maybe, when you are born without a cortex, the older parts of the brain adapt to take on some of the roles of the newer parts of the brain.

There are some extreme experiments on animals that can help us reach a conclusion. Across mammals—from rats to cats to monkeys—surgically removing the neocortex leaves them still capable of an astonishing number of things. They can play, show emotions, groom themselves, parent their young, and even learn. Surprisingly, even adult animals that underwent this surgery showed similar behavior.

Altogether, the evidence challenges the view that the cortex is necessary for consciousness, as most major theories of consciousness suggest. It seems that the oldest parts of the brain are enough for some basic forms of consciousness.

The newer parts of the brain—as well as the cerebellum—seem to expand and refine your consciousness. This means we may have to review our theories of consciousness. In turn, this may influence patient care as well as how we think about animal rights. In fact, consciousness might be more common than we realized.

Peter Coppola, Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Neuroscience, University of Cambridge. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.



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Link appearing surprised in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
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Scientists give emotional celebration as Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time

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In a massive medical breakthrough, a research team has found a way to slow the progression of Huntington’s disease for the very first time using gene therapy.

Huntington’s disease is a genetically inherited, fatal neurological disorder that progressively damages nerve cells in the brain, causing problems with movement, cognition, and changes in behavior.

First classified in 1872 by American physician George Huntington, there has never been a cure for the condition. Existing treatments only aim to manage symptoms of Huntington’s, which tend to crop up in patients who are around 30 – 40 years of age.

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Now, more than a century later, scientists have discovered a way to successfully hinder its progress, leaving the medical community stunned and hopeful.

Unsplash.com: robina weermeijerHuntington’s disease is a fatal disorder that degrades brain cells over time.

Researchers slow Huntington’s disease by 75% with gene therapy

On September 24, 2025, a team of medical researchers shared the results of a trial they had conducted over the last three years, which found that a specific type of gene therapy can help slow the progression of Huntington’s disease.

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The condition is caused by a mutation of the huntingtin protein in the brain, transforming it into a toxin that attacks and kills other brain cells over time.

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Using a combination of gene therapy and gene splicing techniques, scientists were able to infuse a non-threatening ‘virus,’ a vehicle for the gene therapy that had been altered to contain a specific sequence of DNA, into several parts deep within patients’ brains.

Unsplash.com: National Cancer InstituteScientists have found a way to slow the spread of Huntington’s disease by 75% using gene therapy.

After insertion, the DNA then activates, attaching itself to messenger RNA and disrupting the process by which the huntingtin gene’s code is translated into proteins.

The delicate surgical operation takes anywhere from 12-18 hours to complete. Surgeons use a catheter and MRI imaging to inject the therapy, making it equal parts grueling for everyone involved and likely incredibly expensive.

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uniQure, a leading company in gene therapy, published the study’s results on September 24, showing that patients experienced an average 75% slowing of Huntington’s three years after undergoing treatment.

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Speaking to the BBC, the director of the University College London Huntington’s Disease Centre, Prof Tabrizi, gushed over the trial’s “spectacular” results.

“We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression,” she told the outlet.

Prof Ed Wild, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at UCLH, said he got a “bit teary” at the news.

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“There was every chance that we would never see a result like this, so to be living in a world where we know this is not only possible, but the actual magnitude of the effect is breathtaking, it’s very difficult to fully encapsulate the emotion,” he said.



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EPA scientists were reportedly ordered to halt publication of research papers

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According to a report by The Washington Post, scientists with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water were ordered by “political appointees” to stop work on studies that were headed for publication, as they’ll now be “subject to a new review process.” Staffers were reportedly given the instructions in a town hall meeting this week. The only papers exempt are those for which “scientific journals had already returned proofs — the final step in the academic publication process,” reports The Washington Post, which spoke to two agency employees. Among other things, the role of the Office of Water is to ensure the safety of drinking water.

It’s the latest in a string of changes at the EPA under the Trump administration, and raises yet more concerns for public health. In May, the agency announced plans to roll back limitations for some perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals,” that had been set by the Biden administration, saying it would keep only the limits for the two most common, PFOA and PFOS. In July, the EPA laid off thousands of employees and announced it would shut down its scientific research office. The same month, the EPA proposed rescinding certain greenhouse gas emissions standards, and just last week announced a plan to do away with the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that requires some of the nation’s biggest polluters to report their emissions.

Following the latest orders, staffers with the Office of Water who spoke to The Washington Post said they were not given a reason to provide scientific journals as to why the papers have been halted, and no details on the new review process have been shared. One employee told the publication, “This represents millions of dollars of research, potentially, that’s now being stopped.”



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Scientists have worked out why some people invert video game controls, so which side is correct?
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Scientists have worked out why some people invert video game controls, so which side is correct?

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When you push the right controller stick forwards, do you expect a game camera to move up or down? Whether players use “normal” or “inverted” camera controls has long been a point of debate.

Now, though, it’s part of a scientific study. As reported by The Guardian, Dr Jennifer Corbett and Dr Jaap Munneke at Brunel University London initiated a study during lockdown into the neuroscience of human-computer interactions using remote subjects, speaking with players to research controller inversion.

The duo have now published their findings in their paper “Why axis inversion? Optimising interactions between users, interfaces, and visual displays in 3D environments”. And the results are all about how your brain perceives objects in 3D space.

“Many people told us that playing a flight simulator, using a certain type of console, or the first game they played were the reasons they preferred to invert or not,” said Corbett. “Many also said they switched preferences over time. We added a whole new section to the study based on all this feedback.”

Participants were given a questionnaire and tasked with experiments around spatial awareness. “They had to mentally rotate random shapes, take on the perspective of an ‘avatar’ object in a picture, determine which way something was tilted in differently tilted backgrounds, and overcome the typical ‘Simon effect’ where it’s harder to respond when a target is on the opposite v the same side of the screen as the response button,” Corbett explained.

“It turns out the most predictive out of all the factors we measured was how quickly gamers could mentally rotate things and overcome the Simon effect. The faster they were, the less likely they were to invert.”

Yet while inverted players were the slowest on the tasks, they were also more accurate.

Ultimately, while players think they choose controls based on their first exposure, it’s more likely due to your brain’s perception of objects in 3D space.

Corbett even suggested players should try the opposite way to what they’re used to. “The most surprising finding for gamers [who don’t invert] is that they might perform better if they practised with an inverted control scheme,” said Corbett. “Maybe not, but given our findings, it’s definitely worth a shot because it could dramatically improve competitive game play!”

What’s more, the research could have implications outside of gaming. “This work opened our eyes to the huge potential that optimising inversion settings has for advancing human-machine teaming,” says Corbett. “So many technologies are pairing humans with AI and other machines to augment what we can do alone. Understanding how a given individual best performs with a certain setup (controller configuration, screen placement, whether they are trying to hit a target or avoid an obstacle) can allow for much smoother interactions between humans and machines in lots of scenarios from partnering with an AI player to defeat a boss, to preventing damage to delicate internal tissue while performing a complicated laparoscopic surgery.”

Personally, inverting camera controls is the first thing I do when booting up a new game. I always presumed it’s because that’s how I learned to play as a kid – just as Corbett said – but perhaps it’s actually my brain after all.

Are you an inverter or non-inverter for gaming controls? Let us know in the comments.



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Scientists Finally 'See' a Proton Move Through Water, and It Only Took 200 Years
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Scientists Finally ‘See’ a Proton Move Through Water, and It Only Took 200 Years

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For over two centuries, scientists have known that water transports a positive charge through protons. But they had never actually seen it happen—until now.

In a Science paper published September 11, Yale researchers reported that they devised a method to track, measure, and effectively “see” a proton’s journey through water. For the experiment, the team used a 30-foot-long mass spectrometer—an instrument that separates different elements by mass—that took years to customize and refine. The device allowed them to benchmark how quickly protons moved through six charged water molecules.

“We show what happens in a tiny molecular system where there is no place for the protons to hide,” said Mark Johnson, senior author of the study and a chemist at Yale University, in a release.

Solving a seemingly obvious mystery

There’s a surprisingly long list of things in science that we know—or strongly suspect—to be true, but that have either never been directly confirmed or still lack a good explanation.

That hasn’t stopped scientists and engineers from using these yet-to-be-confirmed ideas to achieve some remarkable breakthroughs. Protons in water, for example, play a role in “everything from eyesight to energy storage to rocket fuel,” the researchers explained.

But protons are terribly small and display quantum mechanical properties, which makes them frustratingly difficult to track.

“They aren’t polite enough to stay in one place long enough to let us observe them easily,” Johnson said. “They are thought to conduct the charge through an atomic-scale relay mechanism, in which protons jump from molecule to molecule.”

Trapped in an organic ‘taxi’

To observe such processes in action, Johnson and his team used 4-aminobenzoic acid, an organic molecule capable of taking an extra proton in two different sites. The two locations can be distinguished by the color of light they absorb, said study co-lead author Payten Harville, a postdoctoral student at Yale, in the release.

For the experiment, the team attached the 4-aminobenzoic acid molecules to the six water molecules. Harville explained that in this setup, protons can only “get from one docking site to the other [by hitching] a ride on a water network ‘taxi.’”

When the protons “hitch” onto the taxi, the team’s specialized mass spectrometer “destructively” analyzes each reaction ten times per second with carefully timed lasers, the researchers explained.

To be clear, the experiment still hasn’t caught the intermediate steps of the proton’s path through water. However, it sets the most stringent parameters for the process so far, Johnson said.

“We’re able to provide parameters that will give theorists a well-defined target for their chemical simulations, which are ubiquitous but have been unchallenged by experimental benchmarks,” he added.

Indeed, if this technology could expand beyond Yale’s custom spectrometer, it could give an extra boost to the precision of experiments in fundamental chemistry. Given how it’s taken science 200 years to get to this point, taking a few more to really drive this method home should be a shorter wait.



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Scientists Infuse Cement With Bacteria to Create Living Energy Device
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Scientists Infuse Cement With Bacteria to Create Living Energy Device

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Microbes are known for their remarkable survival abilities. And now, scientists have discovered another remarkable trait: Turning cement into an electricity storage device.

In a study published September 9 in Cell Reports Physical Science, researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark describe how they seeded a bacteria called Shewanella oneidensis into cement. These particular bacteria are known to be good at transferring electrons across surfaces, and the researchers wondered if they could act as an energy transporter in cement.

Indeed, the cement came to life, with the bacteria establishing a “network of charge carriers capable of both storing and releasing electrical energy,” the researchers explained in a statement. In other words, the cement could store and release electricity, a finding that could one day enable more sustainable buildings. Even better, the researchers found that even after the microbes died, the material could be reinvigorated by being fed nutrients.

An undead cement complex

When the microbes inevitably died, a simple trick literally brought them back to life. The team integrated a microfluidic network to supply the bacteria with nutrients, and the same channels could be used to “reawaken” the system, recovering up to 80% of the original energy capacity, according to the study.

“We’ve combined structure with function,” Qi Luo, study lead author and a civil engineer at Aarhus University, said.

“The result is a new kind of material that can both bear loads and store energy—and which is capable of regaining its performance when supplied with nutrients.”

The resulting material produces a hefty load of energy, the researchers said—even under stress. For instance, one stress test involved putting the cement in extreme temperature environments, which it endured with ease. And when the researchers connected six blocks of the cement, the structure generated enough power to switch on an LED light.

The future of sustainable building?

Cement is relatively cheap compared to most materials, making it easy to scale. The bacteria are also abundant in nature, meaning that the technology is sustainable at its core. That said, more work is needed to take what is a proof-of-concept paper through to being a market-ready material.

“We envision this technology being integrated into real buildings, in walls, foundations, or bridges, where it can support renewable energy sources like solar panels by providing local energy storage,” Luo said.

“Imagine a regular room built with bacteria-infused cement: even at a modest energy density of 5 Wh/kg, the walls alone could store about 10 kWh—enough to keep a standard enterprise server running for a whole day.”



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Scientists Stunned as Tiny Algae Keep Moving Inside Arctic Ice
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Scientists Stunned as Tiny Algae Keep Moving Inside Arctic Ice

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Scientists know that microbial life can survive under some extreme conditions—including, hopefully, harsh Martian weather. But new research suggests that one particular microbe, an algal species found in Arctic ice, isn’t as immobile as it was previously believed. They’re surprisingly active, gliding across—and even within—their frigid stomping grounds.

In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published September 9, researchers explained that ice diatoms—single-celled algae with glassy outer walls—actively dance around in the ice. This feisty activity challenges assumptions that microbes living in extreme environments, or extremophiles, are barely getting by. If anything, these algae evolved to thrive despite the extreme conditions. The remarkable mobility of these microbes also hints at an unexpected role they may play in sustaining Arctic ecology.

“This is not 1980s-movie cryobiology,” said Manu Prakash, the study’s senior author and a bioengineer at Stanford University, in a statement. “The diatoms are as active as we can imagine until temperatures drop all the way down to -15 C [5 degrees Fahrenheit], which is super surprising.”

That temperature is the lowest ever for a eukaryotic cell like the diatom, the researchers claim. Surprisingly, diatoms of the same species from a much warmer environment didn’t demonstrate the same skating behavior as the ice diatoms. This implies that the extreme life of Arctic diatoms birthed an “evolutionary advantage,” they added.

An Arctic exclusive

For the study, the researchers collected ice cores from 12 stations across the Arctic in 2023. They conducted an initial analysis of the cores using on-ship microscopes, creating a comprehensive image of the tiny society inside the ice.

To get a clearer image of how and why these diatoms were skating, the team sought to replicate the conditions of the ice core inside the lab. They prepared a Petri dish with thin layers of frozen freshwater and very cold saltwater. The team even donated strands of their hair to mimic the microfluidic channels in Arctic ice, which expels salt from the frozen apparatus.

As they expected, the diatoms happily glided through the Petri dish, using the hair strands as “highways” during their routines. Further analysis allowed the researchers to track and pinpoint how the microbes accomplished their icy trick.

The researchers developed and used special microscopes and experimental environments to track how the diatoms move through ice. Credit: Prakash Lab/Stanford University

“There’s a polymer, kind of like snail mucus, that they secrete that adheres to the surface, like a rope with an anchor,” explained Qing Zhang, study lead author and a postdoctoral student at Stanford, in the same release. “And then they pull on that ‘rope,’ and that gives them the force to move forward.”

Small body, huge presence

If we’re talking numbers, algae may be among the most abundant living organisms in the Arctic. To put that into perspective, Arctic waters appear “absolute pitch green” in drone footage purely because of algae, explained Prakash.

The researchers have yet to identify the significance of the diatoms’ gliding behavior. However, knowing that they’re far more active than we believed could mean that the tiny skaters unknowingly contribute to how resources are cycled in the Arctic.

“In some sense, it makes you realize this is not just a tiny little thing; this is a significant portion of the food chain and controls what’s happening under ice,” Prakash added.

That’s a significant departure from what we often think of them as—a major food source for other, bigger creatures. But if true, it would help scientists gather new insights into the hard-to-probe environment of the Arctic, especially as climate change threatens its very existence. The timing of this result shows that, to understand what’s beyond Earth, we first need to protect and safely observe what’s already here.



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Scientists Say This Might Actually Help
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Scientists Say This Might Actually Help

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Normally, I’d start this sort of article by saying something along the lines of, “Everyone knows how horrible it is to feel motion sick.” But that’s not entirely true—plenty of people can text, read, and do all sorts of things in a moving vehicle without feeling the slightest bit nauseous. If that sounds like you, you’ll have to trust me—a chronic sufferer of motion sickness—when I say that it wholeheartedly sucks.

Plus, many drugs used for motion sickness come with an unwanted side effect: drowsiness. While that’s useful for a long-haul red-eye, it definitely kills the mood on a road trip. That’s why researchers have looked into whether music can help people recover from carsickness, and they might be onto something.

“Motion sickness significantly impairs the travel experience for many individuals, and existing pharmacological interventions often carry side-effects such as drowsiness,” Qizong Yue, a researcher at Southwest University in China, said in a statement. “Music represents a non-invasive, low-cost, and personalized intervention strategy.”

Simulated carsickness hell

In a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Yue and colleagues induced carsickness in study participants with a driving simulator (you couldn’t pay me enough to get into that) and then played different types of music while monitoring them for potential recovery. According to their results, soft and joyful music best supported recovery. Perhaps surprisingly, even sad music was worse than doing nothing.

The team divided the 30 participants, who had reported moderate levels of previous carsickness, into six groups—four who listened to music as they recovered from motion sickness, one who didn’t, and one whose simulations stopped before the participant became carsick.

Everyone wore electroencephalogram (EEG) caps—tools that measure electrical activity in the brain. The researchers hoped to identify brain signals indicative of carsickness by comparing the neural activity of the first five groups with that of the sixth group—the one for which the simulation stopped before participants could become nauseous (ok, maybe you could pay me to be in group six).

The researchers first measured each participant’s EEG signals as they sat still in the simulator. The participants subsequently underwent a driving task and communicated their level of carsickness. At the end of the task, some participants listened to music for 60 seconds.

The team then asked them how carsick they still were. The participants reported that joyful music reduced carsickness by 57.3%, soft music reduced it by 56.7%, and passionate music by 48.3%. While those who didn’t listen to music reported 43.3% fewer carsickness symptoms after the 60 seconds, participants who listened to sad music reported a reduction of just 40%.

The researchers suggest that soft music might relax tensions that worsen carsickness, and joyful music may provide a distraction by triggering brain reward systems. Sad music could aggravate negative feelings and, as a result, worsen a person’s general discomfort.

Your brain when you’re motion sick

Interestingly, the EEG data revealed changes in participants’ occipital lobe brain activity when they said they were carsick. Specifically, the device recorded less complex activity when participants reported feeling significantly nauseous. As they recovered, brain activity in this area gradually returned to normal levels.

“Based on our conclusions, individuals experiencing motion sickness symptoms during travel can listen to cheerful or gentle music to achieve relief,” Yue explained. “The primary theoretical frameworks for motion sickness genesis apply broadly to sickness induced by various vehicles. Therefore, the findings of this study likely extend to motion sickness experienced during air or sea travel.”

However, “the primary limitation of this study is its relatively small sample size,” the researcher added. “This constraint results in limited statistical power.” What’s more, one’s brain might react differently to a simulation than real-life conditions. In other words, more research with larger samples is needed to confirm both the carsickness brain activity patterns and to continue investigating the impact of music on motion sickness.

Moving forward, the team will study different types of motion sickness and the influence of music taste. And if any of the researchers are reading this article, I’d like to suggest investigating the anecdotal evidence of how singing helps prevent and/or recover from motion sickness. It would finally prove to my family that I literally need to belt out the lyrics to all of Taylor Swift’s songs when we hit those windy roads.



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