Let’s start with this: If you experience motion sickness, you’re not weak, sensitive, or dramatic—you’re human.
And your nervous system is doing its best to make sense of confusing information.
In the neuroscience space, we call this experience “sensory mismatch.”
What Is Sensory Mismatch?
Your brain’s job is to make constant predictions about where you are in space. It uses sensory input from multiple systems—especially your eyes (visual system) and inner ears (vestibular system)—to do this.
When those systems send conflicting information, the brain can’t easily reconcile the difference, and that internal confusion creates a cascade of symptoms:
- Dizziness
- Nausea
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Heightened anxiety or muscle tension
The Classic Example: Reading in a Moving Car
Let’s say you’re reading a book on a road trip.
- Your eyes see a still page—your visual system thinks you’re not moving.
- Meanwhile, your vestibular system (which detects head movement and acceleration) feels the car turning, speeding up, slowing down.
Your brain gets confused: Am I still or am I moving?
This mismatch in motion signals creates the disorienting experience of motion sickness.
The Science Behind It
The dominant theory behind motion sickness is called the Sensory Conflict Theory (Warwick-Evans et al., 1998).
Their research showed that the greater the conflict between what your eyes and vestibular system are perceiving, the stronger the motion sickness symptoms.
The brain expects these systems to work together. When they don’t, it can’t rely on its internal “map” of your body in space—and that mismatch is registered as a threat.
The Protective Reflex
When the brain is confused, it often responds by increasing alertness and tightening the body—especially around the neck, jaw, and upper back. It’s a survival mechanism.
This helps explain why people with motion sickness also often report:
- Chronic muscle tension
- Heightened pain sensitivity
- Anxiety or overwhelm when overstimulated
It’s not “just” nausea—your whole body is responding to a sensory conflict.
So What Can You Do?
Working with the nervous system means learning how to improve the brain’s sensory maps and help it resolve mismatches more efficiently. That might look like:
- Training your vestibular system with head movement drills
- Improving your visual tracking and convergence skills
- Strengthening your proprioceptive system through body-based practices (like grounding, balance work, or even breath training)
By giving your brain more coherent sensory input, it can start trusting the information it receives—and your symptoms can soften.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve dealt with motion sickness, chronic tension, or “weird” sensory issues, know this:
There’s real neuroscience behind your experience.
Your body is not broken—it’s just trying to make sense of a world that sometimes moves too fast or too unpredictably.
The more we understand how the brain processes motion, balance, and vision, the more empowered we become to retrain those systems—with compassion and curiosity.
