A study has found that listening to your favourite music can reduce pain intensity and unpleasantness, adding to the knowledge base on how music can decrease sensitivity to pain.
The authors also found that ‘reports of moving or bittersweet emotional experiences seem[ed] to result in lower ratings of pain unpleasantness’.
This is knowledge which could optimise music-based pain therapies, the authors state.
‘In addition, we used scrambled music, which mimics music in every way except its meaningful structure, and can therefore conclude that it is probably not just distraction or the presence of a sound stimulus that is causing the hypoalgesia,’ said one of the authors Darius Valevicius.
The researchers also note limitations of their study, especially regarding emotion themes, and the need for further work, though highlight ‘fairly strong’ preliminary results.
Image | Unsplash
