This is why you feel like being sick while reading in the car

DO YOU ever feel like vomiting whenever you read a book during a car trip? This neuroscientist says you can blame your “idiot brain” for that.

The human brain thinks it’s being poisoned when you read in the car, a leading neuroscientist says.

SOME lucky people can sail through a car journey without the faintest whiff of vomit.

But for some of us, road trips are plagued by nausea and constant stops at service stations to take a break and get some fresh air.

Heading out on a family road trip? This is why you may end up getting car sick.

But why is it we get motion sickness in cars? And why does reading books often bring it on or make it worse?

According to neuroscientist and author Dean Burnett, it’s all down to our “idiot brains” thinking they’re being “poisoned”, The Sun reports.

During the age where predators and eating harmful plants were a genuine threat to humans, our brains developed to be hyper-vigilant, providing stress responses which induce sickness at the first sign of poisoning.

Though we have evolved to find riding in a car and reading a book while doing so a perfectly normal activity, our brains haven’t caught up with us yet and find this super weird.

Burnett told NPR’s Fresh Air: “When you think about it, moving shouldn’t make us sick. We move around all the time.

“We’re a very mobile species. So … why would moving suddenly make us want to throw up?

“When we’re in a vehicle like a car or a train, or a ship especially, you’re not actually physically moving.

“Your body is still. You’re sat down. You’ve got no signals from the muscles saying we are moving right now — your muscles are saying we are stationary.”

While your muscles, nerves and eyes tell your brain that you’re sitting still, the fluid in your ears is rocking and sloshing around, informing it your body is actually on the move.

This sensory mismatch gives your brain mixed messages.

Burnett said the brain is evolved to determine the only thing that can cause a sensory mismatch like that is a neurotoxin or poison.

As a result, your brain deals with it by inducing a feeling of nausea to “throw up” the poison.

He explained: “As soon as the brain gets confused by anything like that, it says, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do, so just be sick, just in case’.

“We get motion sickness because the brain’s constantly worried about being poisoned.”

Reading a book then makes it worse, as while looking out of the window soothes your brain by providing visual proof you are moving, focusing on a static page confuses it all the more.

Burnett said children were more prone to motion sickness as their brains were still developing, but thankfully many people grew out of it.

Many of us are probably still hoping that will happen.

This article originally appeared in The Sun and was reproduced with permission.