When fellow GSD blogger and music-lover, Sayan Nag, proposed a blog series covering the neuroscience of music, I readily jumped on-board. For us, and the many in the world like us, music is an integral part of day-to-day life. Drawing from countless hours of staying plugged into my earphones or indulging in whatever tunes creep up in my mind, I know that music has a profound impact on my mental state, being able to singularly alter my mood and overall outlook. Together, Sayan and I will delve deeper into the neuroscience behind common musical experiences. Given the on-going political and social unrest – support the cause! – unfolding over the backdrop of a global pandemic and climate change, we’ve decided to take a look at how music can help ease the toll that stress takes on our body.

~ Brian Nghiem

The human body under stress

The human stress response (commonly called the “fight-or-flight” response) is our body’s natural way of equipping us to survive life-threatening situations. Although the main stressors that we face day-to-day have changed over time, all the telltale signs of stress – the increased heart rate, the dry mouth, the perspiration, etc. – continue to alert us of remarkable, near-instantaneous transformations going on in our body.

The dramatic physiological change that our body undergoes is carried out with the help of hormones released from two structures found in the brain – the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland – as well as the adrenal glands, which are found atop our kidneys. These structures form the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a dynamic network that helps maintain the body’s baseline conditions.

When we encounter a stressor, the hypothalamus increases our alertness by recruiting the sympathetic nervous system, stimulating the release of epinephrine (also known as “adrenaline”) from the adrenal glands. A cascade of powerful physiological responses ensues: our heart rate quickens, our blood vessels dilate, the muscles in our airways relax to help increase air intake, among other systemic changes. In addition to epinephrine, the HPA axis also promotes the release of cortisol from the adrenal glands, further contributing to the whole-body stress response.

Although our bodies are, for the most part, well-equipped with handling acute (short-term) stress, chronic (long-term) stress is known to lead to a long list of health complications. In addition to contributing to high blood pressure and obesity, the prolonged over-activation of our stress response impacts our cognitive abilities and is linked to a variety of mental disorders [1], including depression [2]. It’s important that we adopt healthy mechanisms for coping with stress, such as practicing meditation and exercise.

Musical stress management

Music can serve as an effective stress management tool. Beyond the casual enjoyment of listening to our favourite tunes, music has found its place in clinical practice. Music therapy (MT) is an evidence-based discipline that engages patients in musical activities to promote cognitive healing. Even before MT became an established discipline, music had long been used to improve patients’ clinical care. In a landmark review article [3], the authors looked at 260 published studies involving the use of music to help patients manage their pain while recovering from surgery; they ultimately concluded that music “can reduce postoperative pain, anxiety, and analgesia needs.” But what’s the science behind these observed health benefits?

Human cognition of music is a well-studied topic. We know that the sounds we hear come from complex patterns of longitudinal waves travelling through the air. These waves strike our eardrums, sending shockwaves through our inner ear and triggering an electrochemical response carried by the auditory nerves to the brain. From there, the signals are processed to identify the frequency and temporal patterns that make up the melodies and rhythms we hear [4]. The story becomes more complicated as we look at the higher-order components of music, such as the emotional response that music elicits from its listener.

The biological basis of music-mediated stress management has yet to be fully deciphered. Research studies tend to involve a multi-faceted approach to quantifying stress. There are established methods of reliably and ethically inducing stress in participants, such as the Trier social stress test, in which participants undergo a simulated job interview followed by a mental math test. Salivary or blood samples are taken to measure levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and serum alpha-amylase (sAA), which are common biomarkers of stress. These measurements are supplemented with psychometric evaluations, which gauge the participant’s own perception of their stress level.

Early studies produced contradictory results, stemming from differences in their methodologies and difficulties in establishing control over the many experimental variables involved. [5]. More recent findings consistently suggest that listening to music promotes an improved stress response. In one study [5], participants that listened to music before undergoing stressful conditions were found to have higher cortisol levels during the stress test, followed by a faster recovery to baseline cortisol levels. Another study [6] corroborated these findings, adding that the participants who had listened to music also reported more positive feelings. This supports the claim that the higher levels of cortisol measured during the experiment reflect a more effective stress response rather than higher levels of stress.

The degree to which music succeeds in relieving stress has been found to depend on a number of factors, including your own self-evaluation of your stress levels and whether you are actively listening with the purpose of reducing stress [7]. Although there is much left to be discovered about how music works as a stress management tool, this shouldn’t stop you from continuing to tune into your favourite playlist to get through a tough day a little more easily.

Further readings:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0228-0#:~:text=The%20human%20stress%20response%20is,1).
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/music-and-health
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/may31/brainwave-053106.html

REFERENCES

1. McLaughlin KJ, Gomez J, Baran SE, Conrad CD. (2007) The effects of chronic stress on hippocampal morphology and function: An evaluation of chronic restraint paradigms. Brain Res. 1161:56-64. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.05.042


2. Liu RT, Alloi LB. (2010) Stress generation in depression: A systematic review of the empirical literature and recommendations for future study. Clin Psychol Rev. 30(5):582-593. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2010.04.010


3. Hole J, Hirsch M, Ball E, Meads C. (2015) Music as an aid for postoperative recovery in adults: a systemtatic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet 386(10004):1659-1671. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60169-6


4. Peretz I, Zatorre RJ. (2005) Brain Organization for Music Processing. Annu Rev Psychol. 56:89-114. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070225


5. Thoma MV, La Marca R, Bronnimann R, Finkel L, Ehlert U, et al. (2013) The Effect of Music on the Human Stress Response. PLoS ONE 8(8):e70156. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070156


6. Koelsch S, Boehlig A, Hohenadel M, Nitsche I, et al. (2016) The impact of acute stress on hormones and cytokines and how their recovery is affected by music-evoked positive mood. Scientific Reports 6(23008). doi:10.1038/srep23008


7. Linnemann A, Ditzen B, Strahler J, Doerr JM et al. (2015) Music Listening as a Means of Stress Reduction in Daily Life. Psychoneuroendocrinology 60:82-90. doi:10.1016/j.psyneueu.2015.06.008