August 26, 2022 – Everyone listens: If you thought your favorite song was making your whole body feel better, new science suggests it wasn’t just your imagination.
In fact, this is not only Music It has an analgesic or pain relieving effect. Researchers have found that many types of sounds or noises can help — if played at the correct volume level, that is.
Doctors and researchers have long known that there is a relationship between the voice and the body. music therapy It has been used for decades to help Pain management After the operation, during the work After and during childbirth Cancer treatment.
But Why This happens is not well understood. Some theories suggest that the analgesic effects of sound are psychological – that is, it calms or distracts a person from pain.
This new research suggests that something deeper is at work. and the paper Posted in SciencesAnd the It may shed light on the inner workings of the brain, and reveal the circuits that run behind this pain relief.
Do you want to hear more?
Yuan Yuan (Kevin) Liu, Ph.D.is a sensory and pain biology researcher at the National Dental and Craniofacial Research Institute and a co-author on the study.
“The relative sound intensity may play a role in helping to reduce pain,” he says. “Low-intensity sound is able to disrupt the somatosensory pathway and thereby activate the somatosensory thalamus.” This means that noise played at a low volume appears to impair activity in parts of the brain responsible for pain signals.
In the study, scientists injected mice with a solution that caused discomfort in their paws. Then they put on a variety of sounds of different intensities, ranging from pleasant Music To white noise, monitor for any changes in rodent behavior.
What they saw, according to Liu, indicated that the sounds “reduced reflexive foot withdrawal and aversion to painful stimuli—analgesia indicators for rodents.” In other words, the sounds seemed to help reduce pain in mice.
The researchers found that the ideal volume for pain relief was only 5 decibels above room noise.
“A low-intensity 5 dB sound is associated with background sound,” Liu explains. “It is not an absolute value but a relative value.” Therefore, you may want to turn the volume up a little higher than the background noise wherever you are.
And what might be good news? mineral sludge Fans, the types of audio being played didn’t make any difference. Even when the noise has been modified to be “unpleasant”, playing it at the correct volume still provides a pain-relieving effect.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in Mozart or Metallica, according to the results, at least. Either one can work – as long as the melodies are played with the right sound.
The future of sound and pain management
Liu cautions that when it comes to transcribing the symphony of how the body and mind respond to sound, we’re only in the opening actions.
“There is still a long way to go to translate these findings in mice into the human context,” he says.
We can’t be certain that human brains work the same way mice brains do when exposed to sound. But the findings in mice could provide clues about how our brains work — and thus provide us with one piece of the puzzle in understanding how sound affects pain perception.
“We hope that our study will open up new directions in the field of sound-induced analgesia,” says Liu. But more research needs to be done for that to happen.
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