Listening to moving music that produces “chills” may reduce pain, study finds

nme.com:

Frontiers in Pain Research, Darius Valevicius – the first author of the research from McGill University in Montreal, Canada – found that while listening to a preferred artist may lead to a reduction of pain equal to painkillers, music that produces “chills” has an even greater impact.“We can approximate that favourite music reduced pain by about one point on a 10-point scale, which is at least as strong as an over-the-counter painkiller like Advil [ibuprofen] under the same conditions.

Moving music may have an even stronger effect,” he said (via The Guardian).The study conducted saw 63 healthy participants attend the Roy pain laboratory on the McGill campus, and researchers applied heat akin to a hot cup of coffee to their left arm.

Some were asked to listen to two of their favourite tracks, some had relaxing music selected for them, some listened to scrambled music, and others sat in silence.From there, they were asked to rate the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain after around seven minutes, as well as the pleasantness from the music number of “chills” they experienced from the songs (referring to tingling, shivers or goosebumps).Those listening to their favourite tracks rated the pain as less intense by about four points on a 100-point scale, and less unpleasant by about nine points compared to those assigned silence or scrambled sound.

Additionally, those listening to relaxing music assigned to them rated the pain as higher than those listening to their preferred choice of music.“We found a very strong correlation between music pleasantness and pain unpleasantness, but zero correlation between music pleasantness and pain intensity, which would be an unlikely finding if it was just placebo or expectation.