Scientists have pointed out the role of music in recovery from stress
Music can help the brain and body recover from acute stress. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have discovered changes in the interaction between different brain regions that may explain this effect. About how music affects recovery after stress and why it is important to listen to it after a tense situation — in the material of Izvestia.
Why does music help you recover from stress?
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing decided to find out why music can help to cope with stress. Previously, it was known that people subjectively perceive relaxing music as a means to calm down, but scientific evidence on this effect remained ambiguous.
For the experiments, the researchers recruited 120 healthy volunteers. The participants were given an oral counting task with a time limit that was supposed to trigger a stress reaction.
After that, the scientists compared the recovery of people who listened to relaxing music with the recovery of participants who listened to soothing sounds of water. The results showed that the group who listened to music recovered from stress faster. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Scientists have deliberately made people nervous
To create a stressful situation, the researchers used an oral counting task that had to be performed under limited time conditions. After it was completed, the participants moved on to the recovery stage.
In behavioral experiments, groups of 30 people listened to either relaxing music or soothing sounds of water. During this time, the scientists monitored the participants' mood, heart rate, sweating, and cortisol levels.
Yi Du, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and senior author of the paper
After experiencing stress, the brain can remain in a state of heightened alert. The sounds of nature can serve as a soothing backdrop, but music also makes the brain move in a given direction: tension builds, expectations form, and eventually the tension subsides.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used in a separate experiment. The participants completed the same stressful task, after which they were inside the scanner during recovery. This allowed the scientists to observe how the interaction between different areas of the brain was changing.
It turned out that both groups gradually recovered from stress, but the process was faster for those who listened to music. Their heart rate and sweating decreased faster, and their positive mood was restored more strongly. Analysis of saliva samples also showed lower cortisol levels in the music-listening group.
What happened to the brain while listening to music
Brain scans showed that music changed the interaction between several areas of the brain. In particular, changes were observed between the auditory cortex, which processes sounds, the insular lobe, which tracks bodily sensations, and the thalamus, which transmits sensory information.
And Du
Simply put, music doesn't just mask stress or distract us from it — it gives the brain a structured path to a calmer state.
These changes were associated with the recovery of the body after a stressful situation. The researchers compared them with changes in heart rate and other indicators of the body's response to stress.
Thus, the results indicate changes not only in the subjective perception of the state after a stressful situation, but also in the interaction between brain regions involved in processing sounds, bodily sensations and sensory information. The authors of the study write that music does not just mask stress, but is associated with a restructuring of the brain's response to it.
It turns out that listening time also matters.
Separately, the scientists drew attention to when exactly the participants listened to music. Its benefits manifested themselves during recovery after the volunteers had already completed a stressful task.
In other words, the study did not show the same effect from listening to music before a stressful situation. The results obtained relate specifically to the period after exposure to stress, when the body is already beginning to return to its original state.
Therefore, according to the results of the work, relaxing music after a stressful situation can help recovery faster than soothing sounds of water. At the same time, the study was devoted specifically to the acute stress reaction and subsequent recovery after it.
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