How your favorite songs can help you relieve chronic pain

Popular proverbs have many examples of how music can have a positive impact on people, and science has analyzed this influence on several occasions. Now, recent work by Anglo-Saxon researchers explores its use to relieve chronic pain.

O studyingpublished in the magazine PLO ONEconcludes that people who believe they control the track they listen to experience less distress than those who are imposed on a particular song.

If a song we like plays, our neural reward system is stimulated and motivates us to keep listening, which can be important for mitigating pain.

Claire Howlin, QMUL

“People’s preferences are the essential aspect of musical engagement to promote pain relief. If a song that we like is played, our neural reward system is stimulated and motivates us to keep listening, which can be important in mitigating diseases”, he tells SINC. Claire Howlingfrom Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and first author of the study.

Another neural area related to music for pain relief is the standard mode networkwhich appears when we reorient attention from external stimuli to more internal stimuli, such as memories or reflexes, making the discomfort seem less intense.

Lyrics and rhythm against chronic pain

According to the authors, listening to music is useful to relieve discomfort, especially chronic diseases, whose effects persist for more than twelve weeks. It is unclear whether these benefits occur in acute (less prolonged) afflictions, as there is no clear information on the underlying mechanisms that trigger these benefits.

At the same time, essential musical properties, such as the tempo, energy or complexity of the songs, seem to play a minor role when it comes to generating more or less relief. What is relevant is feeling capable of decide on what what is heardbecause listeners pay more attention and care if they feel they have that control.

“People find benefits in different types of music (metal, techno, classical, etc.) depending on their preferences. In addition to this aspect, they also take into account the intensity of their pain and the type of activity they would like to do, like exercising or sleeping, for example,” says Howlin.

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Different musical genres have different effects on the listener, depending on their tastes. /Pixabay

The keys: complexity and decision making

To arrive at these results, Howlin and colleagues asked 286 adults with acute pain to rate their discomfort before and after randomly listening to a music track with two versionsone more complex and one simpler. Furthermore, some of them were led to believe that they had some control over the musical qualities of both themes.

Thus, they were able to confirm that individuals who felt they were in control of what they heard and were more actively involved experienced greater relief in the intensity of their pain than participants who did not. At the same time, they ruled out that the complexity of the subject was something to be taken into account in the relief quantification.

Current therapeutic limits and future research

“An important limitation for chronic pain is that some neural damage can cause acute pain when listening to music. Consequently, people who suffer from them do not experience any benefit,” says Howlin.

We still don’t know how often or for how long people need to listen to music to get the best benefits.

Claire Howlin, QMUL

Looking to the future, the relationship between music choice and pain relief could be further explored, as well as the strategies to enhance this relationship.

“We still don’t know when is the ideal time to listen to music. We don’t know how often or for how long people need to hear it to get the benefits, or whether different times should be used depending on affected individuals or types of discomfort.