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What Can Music Do For You?

  • Mar 30
  • 3 min read

by Tilly Merton

Music has a unique ability to reach parts of us that words alone cannot. Across cultures and generations, music remains a constant companion — quietly supporting our mental, emotional and social wellbeing.

In this article, I have decided to add sufficient evidence to my claim about the release of cortisol levels (the stress hormone). I will be measuring my heart rate throughout the full completion of this article, with music being played in the background, start to finish. Though this experiment will most definitely have many “inconsistent factors”, getting up to walk, talking, basically anything that may alter my heart rate other than due to the results of the songs played. I will be considering the “inconsistent variables” in the result as part of the experiment due to the average human fluctuation. The time is currently 4:54 pm; 79BPM. 

The benefits of music are all vastly shown in the brain, specifically the descending pain modulation and neurochemical releases. Therefore, I’ll be focusing mainly on these, as well as the PAG, dorsal horn, and RVM. 

Music can lessen pain, but first, pain modulation needs to be explained. During descending pain modulation (lessening pain), nociceptive signals in the body (when the body experiences something harmful) ascend to the spinal cord, specifically the dorsal horn. From there, the limbic system then evaluates the severity of the pain. If the limbic system decides that the pain can be reduced, it activates the PAG, which then activates the RVM, which descends axons, releasing neurotransmitters that then inhibit or block some of the nociceptive signals that were first detected in the dorsal horn. These act as natural pain killers and modulate the pain before it fully reaches the brain. The neurotransmitters that were sent via the axons from the RVM descended to the dorsal horn, which caused the initial nociceptive signals to be blocked.

Music amplifies this process by providing a larger number of endorphins by the RVM to be released; this is only if one is enjoying the music, thus triggering the reward circuitry, which then acts as a better blockage to the pain that was sent initially. Therefore, music can help act as a “turn down the volume” on pain. Music-induced analgesia!

FUN FACT! – RESEARCH SAYS, that music may be able to even modulate the perception of pain while at the first processing stage – this tells us that music may not just be able to modify the endorphins sent down by the RVM, but it may also reduce the intensity of the pain transmission that has been sent up in the first place.

Focusing more on the hippocampus, music strongly activates memory formation. Music links to emotion, rhythm, and repetition, which then strengthens neutral connections. Think about your favourite song or a song that is really popular at the moment. Rehearsing it word for word seems like a breeze. This concept can then be applied to more medically inclined situations, which is truly amazing. 

The closure of this article showed a decrease in heart rate over a prolonged period of time. Current BPM – 72. AvHeart Rate – 68. 



This is the imaging of the pain stimulation in the brain, the white arrow marking the anterior cingulate cortex ( ACC), the response for the pain perception and the increase and or decrease of the pain signals 



Resources

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9599384/ - National Library of Medicine 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41734385/ - National Library of Medicine 

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