Do brain-training games help motion sickness?

By Dizzout Editorial·Evidence last checked 31 July 2026·How we review

Verdict: Mixed

What it's claimed to do

Widely reported in 2020-21 as “you can train your brain not to get car sick”: spend 15 minutes a day on mental-rotation puzzles for two weeks and become measurably less susceptible.

What the research actually says

This is the clearest replication story in motion sickness research, and it is worth knowing about because the original result is still circulating in headlines. Smyth and colleagues at Warwick and Coventry trained 42 people on pen-and-paper visuospatial tasks for 15 minutes a day over 14 days. Visuospatial scores rose about 40%, and motion sickness fell 51% in a driving simulator and 58% on a real road. It is a striking result and it was reported everywhere. Wiesing and colleagues then ran a conceptual replication with a substantially larger sample and a no-training control group: a 30-minute simulated drive, 14 days of the same 15-minute visuospatial training, then a second drive. Sickness did drop between the first and second drive — but it dropped just as much in the group that had done no puzzles at all, and Bayesian analysis gave clear support to the null hypothesis. The improvement was habituation from the first exposure, not the training. That is the whole lesson: the thing that reduced sickness in both studies was almost certainly being exposed to the motion, which is the intervention with real long-term support. Puzzles are a pleasant way to spend fifteen minutes and they will not hurt you. They are just not the active ingredient.

The studies, in full

Safety & what to watch for

• There is no safety issue here — the risk is opportunity cost. Two weeks spent on puzzles is two weeks not spent on graded exposure, which is the approach with real long-term support.
• Be wary of apps charging for “motion sickness brain training”. The headline finding they lean on failed to replicate.
• Neither study tested children, and neither tested whether any benefit lasts beyond the second exposure.

If you want to try it

• If you want the effect both studies actually measured, get the exposure: short, frequent, gradually harder journeys.
• Our training plan runs that protocol for you and tracks whether your ratings are coming down.
• By all means do puzzles if you enjoy them. Just do them alongside exposure rather than instead of it.

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