By Music is with us in the best and worst moments of our lives. It can also be therapeutic. But did you know that listening to your favorite songs can also help relieve chronic pain?
Since the 1970s, there have been numerous studies investigating how music can help in different therapeutic processes . From more intuitively related objectives, such as facilitating sleep, to improving communication in autism, reducing chronic pain, facilitating memory in Alzheimer’s or promoting physical rehabilitation after brain damage .
Many of them have found that certain characteristics of music are related to changes in some psychophysiological factors. For example, the rhythm or volume of the music is related to heart rate or breathing. However, the most interesting results have been found when analyzing what people experience when listening to music.
When we listen to music, brain regions related to emotions are activated, causing the regulation of our mood. In addition, if what we are listening to is a musical style or a song that we like, it will provoke an immediate feeling of pleasure .
Music and pain
One of the therapeutic applications that has most interested the scientific and clinical community has been the use of music to reduce pain and its negative effects. The results have been surprising, as music is able to reduce anxiety related to pain , its intensity and even the dose of opioid drugs that patients need.
To better understand their association, we will briefly explain below what pain consists of and how it is expressed in the nervous system.
What is pain?
Pain is an experience that has three components: sensory, affective and cognitive.
- The sensory component refers to the information that reaches the nervous system through the nociceptors . This “message” informs about the presence and nature of the painful stimulus (puncture, burning, pressure, etc.), its duration and intensity.
- The emotional and affective component of pain is responsible for interpreting this information as unpleasant and painful as such. Even pain, through this dimension, is capable of generating feelings of fear or anguish.
- The cognitive component is responsible for giving value and meaning to what is happening and for triggering the corresponding behaviors. In other words, it refers to the set of mental processes that surround the experience. These include paying attention to the pain or not, or making use of the knowledge we have about pain and previous experiences, as well as describing the sensation with certain words or others, or deciding what actions to take to alleviate it.
These affective and cognitive components acquire special importance in chronic pain, since they involve constant physical and, especially, mental discomfort. This suffering extended over time has been shown to be capable of altering brain function , and may lead to other pathologies such as anxiety disorders or depression.
Chronic pain and your favorite songs
Unfortunately, the mechanisms by which music alleviates chronic pain are still unclear . However, we have some clues from a wealth of research. On the one hand, music processing and the affective and cognitive components of pain share a specific brain structure: the anterior cingulate cortex .
This is closely connected to the amygdala and thanks to this connection it is very involved in attentional processing and can suppress responses of the autonomic nervous system (such as pain). One of the models that support music interventions for pain is based on this fact.
For the cognitive vitality model, what facilitates the analgesic effects of music is that the experience is meaningful, rewarding and absorbing . If we like the music, the reward system will be stimulated , acting as an incentive for the person to pay attention and stay connected to it. If this happens, physical sensations will stop standing out over other stimuli and attention will be directed to the music and the pleasure it provides.
Furthermore, experts have highlighted the crucial role of what is called cognitive agency. This term refers to the sense of control that a person has over his or her environment. Thus, if the person chooses the music to play, the beneficial effects of music on chronic pain will be multiplied.
Scientific evidence
Recently, several articles have been published reporting very interesting findings related to music and chronic pain. In 2020, a group led by the University of Japan conducted research on how listening to one’s favorite music style influences pain threshold and pain perception.
To do this, they subjected the participants to a functional magnetic resonance imaging session . During this session, they listened to music and received moderately painful stimuli on the skin of their arms. Their results showed that pain sensitivity was lower when people listened to their favorite music. Specifically, the pain threshold increased almost twice as much when their favorite CD was playing.
The authors of this work concluded that this was due to two reasons: that the activation of the anterior cingulate gyrus was attenuated, compared to those who listened to the music chosen by the researchers. And that enjoying the music one chooses distracts from the pain.
But what if this effect is due to the familiarity of hearing songs we know? Claire Howlin from the University of London wondered exactly this. Together with the rest of her team, they looked at what happened to 286 people with chronic pain when they were led to believe that they chose the music and when it was not up to them.
Their findings indicated that those who thought they had control over what they heard were more engaged . Consequently, they felt greater pain relief that became significant over two weeks.
How can you help me?
Considering how pain is processed and how music influences it , it is clear that listening to your favorite songs can help relieve chronic pain. Above all, the most important thing is that it is music that you really like , that you enjoy and that can distract you from internal sensations.
This is something to celebrate, as pain relief does not require listening to a specific melody or a style that is unpleasant to us, but rather each person can find benefits in their preferred music, be it metal, classical, pop or techno .
The key is to pay attention to it. So if you suffer from chronic pain, try practicing some free music therapy at home . Spend a few minutes a day listening to those songs that stimulate you so much. And, above all, pay attention to what you feel you need at any given moment. If your senses are asking for a ballad instead of classical music, don’t hesitate to play it. After all, it is an intervention with no recognized side effects.