Music Soothes Anxiety, Reduces Pain
Researchers have documented that that listening to music can be effective for reducing pain in high-anxiety persons. Investigators discovered music can be used as a distraction and is effective among those who can easily become absorbed in cognitive activities.
In the study, researchers from the University of Utah Pain Research Center evaluated the potential benefits of music for diverting psychological responses to experimental pain stimuli. Accordingly, the key to successful pain control from this method would be the degree of engagement by the patient in the diversion task.
One hundred forty-three subjects were evaluated for the study. They were instructed to listen to music tracks, follow the melodies, and identify deviant tones.
During the music tasks, they were given safe, experimental pain shocks with fingertip electrodes.
The findings showed that central arousal from the pain stimuli reliably decreased with the increasing music-task demand.
Music helps reduce pain by activating sensory pathways that compete with pain pathways, stimulating emotional responses, and engaging cognitive attention (taking the focus away from pain).
Music, therefore, provided meaningful intellectual and emotional engagement to help reduce pain.
A surprise finding was that the music helped study subjects with high levels of anxiety about pain more so than subjects who were not as concerned about the pain. This finding was contrary to the initial prediction that anxiety would interfere with a subject’s ability to become absorbed in the music listening task.
Researchers noted that low anxiety actually may have diminished the ability to engage in the task.
The discovery that anxiety appears to aid engagement with a distraction is considered a new finding. Further, this association implies that these personality characteristics should be considered when recommending engagement strategies for pain relief.
Source: American Pain Society
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Journey that ends InSomnia
I have the great fortune to get intimate with the eerily discolored stain that remains due to my persistent suppression of curiosity of the origins as to prevent fatal trauma, which conquers several inches of my ceiling rapidly throughout the hours of darkness. I’d much rather prefer to investigate subjects that are less physically destructive, which I don’t have time to explore during the sunlit hours of my gloomy life.
This blog has been brought into existence to record my personal endeavors on disturbed nights such as tonight.
I invite you join me on this journey that will end In Somnia.
