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Love a song, feel less pain
Dopamine from a favorite song
A loved song brings dopamine, which adds motivation and optimism, along with endorphins and endocannabinoids that make people feel better. When neuroscientists want to study joy in the brain, the easiest method is to play a song people say they love.
Music and pain
Pain responds too. For someone going through something painful, such as a medical procedure, the easiest way to ease it is to have them listen to music they love.
Listening without moving
For people who cannot move, listening alone activates the part of the brain that thinks it is moving, so the benefit still arrives. The smallest studies have used two to three minutes, about the length of one song.
How did scientists see music release dopamine?
Valorie Salimpoor and colleagues at McGill University reported in 2011 in Nature Neuroscience that brain scans showed dopamine released in the striatum while people listened to music they found moving. The team used PET imaging with a tracer that binds dopamine receptors. Dopamine release came first in anticipation of the most emotional passages and then again at the peak itself. Different parts of the striatum were involved in each moment.
Why do some songs give people chills?
Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University reported in 2001 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that music chills changed activity in brain regions tied to reward and emotion. Those regions are also active during food, sex, and certain drugs. The more intense the chills, the stronger the change in blood flow. Their study was among the first to show that music engages the same reward circuitry as basic biological pleasures.
Why does music dull pain?
A 2015 meta-analysis in The Lancet by Jenny Hole and colleagues pooled dozens of randomized trials of music played around surgery. Patients who listened to music reported less pain and anxiety afterward than patients who did not. Music is thought to work partly by drawing attention away from pain and partly by engaging the brain's reward and emotion circuits. The effect was seen whether the music was chosen by the patient or the clinician.
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