bhaney 2 days ago

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.

  • laserbeam a day ago

    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 2 days ago

    We don’t need a peer reviewed study to test it out.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdi0jQtMqV8&pp

    • marci a day ago

      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 21 hours ago

        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?

    • thesparks a day ago

      Am I the only one who started to feel a bit nauseous listening to this? I'm serious.

      • Angostura a day ago

        it made me feel slightly uneasy. Brains are weird

      • pomian a day ago

        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 a day ago

          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.

          • DrBenCarson a day ago

            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.

            • BugsJustFindMe a day ago

              > 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.

            • xico a day ago

              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.

          • rzzzt a day ago

            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?

            • BugsJustFindMe a day ago

              > You are concentrating on the vomiting part

              The nausea part. The person I'm replying to specifically said "queasy".

            • OJFord a day ago

              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 a day ago

                Does that mean when death is listed that somebody died during the trial?

    • pipes a day ago

      Should I have been able to hear something? I feel like my ears need popped now

      • tgv a day ago

        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.

  • gus_massa a day ago

    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 a day ago

      The participating mice also wanted to be nice and lied to the scientists, as they kept them well fed.

      • gus_massa 12 hours ago

        There is always a risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

        Anyway, if the researchers are not blinded there are many possible sources of errors.

        Perhaps they do the first test in the morning, the sound just before lunch and the second test in the afternoon is made by another person that is more/less friendly to the rats, or the rats has the stomach more full/empty.

        After changing a program and running benchmark, I sometimes run it again if the new program is not faster as I expected. I even gave a second chance to deterministic test, that is as useful as it sounds. It's possible that if the rat does not collaborate the researchers hit's the equivalent of Ctr-F5 just to be sure.

        It's hard to be 100% neutral, so a method is to not know to ensure all rats have exactly the same test conditions.

  • fragmede a day ago

    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 a day ago

      That's why you use gov to fund reliable research, collective money funding collective good of knowledge

    • esseph a day ago

      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 a day ago

      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 a day ago

      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 a day ago

        That’s why they didn’t patent it. They registered the 100Hz specific tone as a trademark.

    • jMyles a day ago

      > 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 a day ago

        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 a day ago

          > 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 a day ago

            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.

    • crotho a day ago

      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 a day ago

    Is using a 100Hz tone to alleviate motion sickness not patent worthy? Does not seem obvious.

teekert a day ago

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 a day ago

    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 16 hours ago

    The ability of pure placebo to actually work quite often is crazy to me.

jawns 2 days ago

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 a day ago

    Why bother with a psychoacoustic measure like dBA or dBZ for a pure sine wave?

    • lamename a day ago

      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.)

    • DidYaWipe 10 hours ago

      Where does it say it's a sine wave, though? I was looking for a description of the waveform, and found none.

  • akdor1154 2 days ago

    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 2 days ago

      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.

      • jerf a day ago

        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 2 days ago

        > 60.9–65.9 dBA

        That's about the level of normal human speech.

      • behringer 2 days ago

        Should be real easy with a cheap sound meter off of Ali express.

        • K0balt 2 days ago

          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.

          • madhacker a day ago

            Let the MAGA fanatics eat cake and bittermelon. Decision has consequences.

          • zoklet-enjoyer a day ago

            There are free phone apps for that

            • K0balt a day ago

              Yes, wildly inaccurate ones in most cases. The Apple Watch has a comparatively well calibrated sound pressure meter though. (Made in China, obviously)

        • Mistletoe a day ago

          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 2 days ago

      Many people could probably hum a 100hz tone.

      • shinycode a day ago

        How would I know if I did it right ?

        • danparsonson a day ago

          Your motion sickness would feel better

        • danaris a day ago

          Just have perfect pitch! That should be no problem, right? .....right??

mcherm 2 days ago

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 2 days ago

    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 2 days ago

      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 a day ago

        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.

wenjian 5 hours ago

I have made a website that play the 100hz sine tone, also have a timer, so that you can give a try.

A few users has already reported to me that it works~

Hope it helps you: https://100hzsinetoneonline.1link.fun

lambdaone 2 days ago

So quite literally mains hum, at least in countries with 50 Hz systems, since the magnetostriction effect makes the second harmonic dominant.

hengheng 2 days ago

Ah, the calming sound of a power supply humming in the background.

  • jpmattia 2 days ago

    Who would have thought that a power supply hum could be so annoying as to make people forget to be carsick.

bombela 2 days ago

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.

  • DidYaWipe 10 hours ago

    LOWERED suspensions.

    And they really are nauseating. I put aftermarket springs on my car that were only supposed to lower it an inch, and instead got 2.5" of nauseating, pavement-slamming sag. Removed those with a quickness.

jedimastert 2 days ago

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 a day ago

    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 17 hours ago

      What other frequencies did they try? Maybe there are better frequencies (or combinations) but they haven't tested for that yet??

modeless 2 days ago

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 a day ago

    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.

8474_s a day ago

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)

dataviz1000 2 days ago

Design motor yacht engines to produce 100hz sound for an extra selling point.

tempestn a day ago

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 a day ago

    So I'm not alone falling sick trying to read in a moving car after all?

    • ec109685 a day ago

      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 a day ago

      "Am I the only one that <extremely common thing>?"

486sx33 a day ago

Wow this is an amazing discovery that could help so many people. AirPod app?

m3kw9 a day ago

Who has the mp3 medicine?

phkahler 2 days ago

So piano music with a droning G chord for a minute.

  • tgv a day ago

    That has a lot of overtones. If this is truly based on some weird psycho-acoustic effect, a piano tone might not work.

14 2 days ago

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.

kazinator a day ago

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 a day ago

If it’s a sound, it should come with a play button

AStonesThrow 2 days ago
  • jraby3 2 days ago

    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 a day ago

      That's disgusting

      • AStonesThrow 12 hours ago

        https://hellraiser.fandom.com/wiki/Coil

        During the production of the first Hellraiser film, [the band Coil] were asked by director Clive Barker to compose the film's score. Their music was described by Barker as "bowel churning." The group completed nine tracks for the score, however the music was rejected by the producers, who wanted a more traditional, classical-based movie score.

        https://www.discogs.com/release/197912-Coil-The-Unreleased-T...

        Coil is the only group I’ve heard on disc whose records I’ve taken off because they made my bowels churn. -- Clive Barker

        [Note: AStonesThrow met Clive Barker at San Diego Comic Con in the mid-1990s, and presented this very disc for his autograph, and he obligingly signed it with the Sharpie provided. Very nice guy in person. Yes: Coil's music is disgusting, reprehensible, vile, and usually unlistenable. Stay well away.]

mikewarot 16 hours ago

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