Grant: Project Grant

Music has been used in the service of healing illnesses and relieving pain for much of recorded history. In the 20th century, audio recording and playback made it possible to bring music into operating rooms and recovery wards, where it was found to reduce pain and anxiety in patients as well as the need for pharmacological analgesics and sedatives. Moreover, data from several studies suggest that music's analgesic effects are comparable to that found for many analgesic drugs, such as morphine, especially if one listens to self- selected preferred music. Thus, music clearly shows promise for treatment, especially considering its low cost, ease of use, and absence of side effects. Yet, very few studies have attempted to unravel the brain bases of the pain-reducing effects of music. Recent research has shown that music causes the release of dopamine in the brain's reward system. We propose that the pain-reducing effects of music are related to the music's rewarding properties. In order to test this hypothesis, we plan to conduct a series of brain imaging and pharmacological manipulation experiments. In studies 1 and 2, participants (study 1, n =60; study 2, n =40) will receive painful thermal stimuli while listening to self-selected preferred music or a control condition consisting of a scrambled version of their selected musical excerpts. Brain responses to music will be measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in study #1 and positron emission tomography (PET) in study #2. Together, these brain imaging techniques will allow measuring the effects of music on brain activity and dopamine while participants experience the pain-relieving effects of music. In study #3 (n = 100), the level of dopamine in the brain will be controlled by drugs that increase or decrease dopamine. We predict that increasing dopamine will amplify the pain-reducing effects of music and that decreasing dopamine will block the pain-reducing effects of music.