He who controls the Spice Sound controls his tummy.

They say music can soothe the savage breast, but now we’re learning that mere sound can soothe the savage stomach as well. More specifically, the irritating condition of motion sickness, that makes so many of life’s joys like boat rides and virtual reality nightmares, could soon be easily remedied by listening to a rather pleasant noise.

It’s first important to understand how motion sickness works. Whenever there is a discrepancy between the motion you see with your eyes and the motion you feel with your body, your brain notices the error and causes the body to react. It’s not clear why this often results in nausea, but there is a theory that since such a discrepancy is also a symptom of poisoning, the body is attempting to reject whatever toxic substance was ingested.

Regardless of the evolutionary reason, it’s something that everyone experiences to some degree. Our body detects motion through our vestibular system deep inside the ear, so a research team at Nagoya University suspects that exposure to sound could have a beneficial effect. After testing the effects of a variety of sounds on lab mice, they found that the very specific tone of 100 hertz at 85 decibels significantly improved their balance after a disorienting motion. This tone was called the Spice Sound and also tested on humans who reported improvements in their conditions in motion simulators after being exposed to the sound for only one minute.

▼ Here is a 100-hertz tone. It’s a low sound though so it might not come through well on some speakers but keep your volume low at first just to be on the safe side.

The good news is that 100-hertz tones are incredibly easy to find on YouTube. The bad news is that hitting that 85-decibel sweet spot is not so easy. This is because decibels are units that don’t exactly equate to what hits our ears. For example, many seniors can’t hear a sound in the 6,000-hertz range, so even if you pump it up to 100 decibels they still aren’t going to hear it.

So, decibels undergo an A-weighting to equate how the sound might feel to an average person, in which case the Spice Sound would be 65.9 A-weighted decibels. However, this also doesn’t take into consideration the listening device, environment, and individual hearing ability, all of which can also affect perceived decibel levels and their purported effects. Still, there’s no harm in listening to the 100-hertz anyway, and you might just luck out and find some relief in it, even if it isn’t the true Spice Sound. Just remember that 85 decibels is rather loud so don’t listen to it for too long.

Readers of the news were ecstatic about the news that not only was there a promise of relief from motion sickness, but one so simple and free of pharmaceuticals.

“Get… out…”
“Seriously?! Give them more funding!”
“Is this true? I even get motion sickness on trains and can’t take long trips.”
“I’ll be so happy if such a magical thing is real.”
“I stopped getting motion sickness since I became an adult, but this is good to know.”
“Sound is amazing. I heard 40 hertz is good against dementia too.”
“I hope this reduces VR sickness too.”
“Sound really is powerful. When I said ‘baldy’ to a man he got really angry. Must have something to do with the vibrations of that word…”

It’s certainly a development to get excited about and hopefully, more problems can be solved by just listening to something rather than ingesting chemicals all the time. In fact, I’m going to revisit my Merzbow albums right now and see if any of that will clear up my hay fever.

Source: Nagoya University, J-Stage, Nazology, My Game News Flash
Featured image: ©SoraNews24
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