Listening to Favorite Music Can Relieve Pain, According to Study

THURSDAY, Oct. 26, 2023 (HealthDay News) — “Sometimes we all suffer,” sings rock band REM But new research in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research suggests that pain can be relieved when patients listen to their favorite music. Canadian researchers built on previous work showing that music could be a drug-free pain reliever by analyzing what type of music could help the most. This decreased sensitivity to pain, called hypoalgesia, occurs when pain stimuli are interrupted between point of entry and where they are recognized as pain by the conscious mind. “We show that favorite music chosen by study participants has a much greater effect on reducing acute thermal pain than unfamiliar relaxing music,” said lead author Darius Valevicius, a doctoral student at the University of Montreal, said in a journal news release. The study was carried out at the Roy Pain Lab at McGill University in Montreal. It was published on October 25. “We also found that emotional responses play a very strong role in predicting whether music will have an effect on pain,” Valevicius said. As part of the study, participants were given moderately painful thermal stimuli on the inner forearm. This felt like holding a hot cup of tea against the skin. These exposures were combined with fragments of music, including favorite music, control tracks and then silence, each lasting approximately seven minutes. Listening to favorite music reduced intensity of pain and unpleasantness strongly, the authors found. Unfamiliar but relaxing cues did not have the same effect. “In addition, we used mixed music, which imitates music in every way except its meaningful structure, and therefore “We can conclude that it is probably not just distraction or the presence of a sound stimulus that is causing hypoalgesia,” Valevicius said. The researchers asked participants about their emotional responses to their favorite music and assigned themes: energizing/activating, happy /joyful, calming/relaxing, and moving/bittersweet. Different emotional themes varied in pain reduction. “We found that reports of moving or bittersweet emotional experiences appeared to result in lower ratings of pain unpleasantness, which was due to a more intense enjoyment of music and more musical chills,” Valevicius said. Musical chills are not fully understood, but they suggest a neurophysiological process that effectively blocks pain signals, according to the authors. These chills can manifest as a tingling sensation , chills or goosebumps. The researchers noted that a limitation of the study is that the music fragments were timed. Listening to relaxing music for longer could have stronger effects.

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The researchers said it would also be important to study whether benefits were seen with other stimuli such as mechanical stimulation or chronic pain.

“Especially when it comes to emotional themes in favorite music, such as soulful/bittersweet melodies, we are exploring new dimensions of the psychology of music listening that have not been well studied, especially in the context of pain relief. “said Valevicius. “As a result, the data we have is limited, although the preliminary results are quite strong.”More informationThe Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California has more information on the effect of music on pain.SOURCE: Frontiers in Pain Research, press release, October 25, 2023

2023-10-26 05:17:48
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