Music-Induced Analgesia in the Brain
Presented During:
Thursday, June 26, 2025: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Room:
M3 (Mezzanine Level)
Poster No:
780
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Eui-Jin Jung1,2, Elise Desbarats3, Mathieu Roy3, Choong-Wan Woo1,2,4,5
Institutions:
1Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, Republic of, 3McGill University, Montreal, Québec, 4Department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, Republic of, 5Life-inspired Neural Network for Prediction and Optimization Research Group, Suwon, Korea, Republic of
First Author:
Eui-Jin Jung
Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
Suwon, Gyeonggi-do|Suwon, Korea, Republic of
Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University
Suwon, Gyeonggi-do|Suwon, Korea, Republic of
Co-Author(s):
Choong-Wan Woo, Ph.D.
Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University|Department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University|Life-inspired Neural Network for Prediction and Optimization Research Group
Suwon, Gyeonggi-do|Suwon, Korea, Republic of|Suwon, Korea, Republic of|Suwon, Korea, Republic of
Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University|Department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University|Life-inspired Neural Network for Prediction and Optimization Research Group
Suwon, Gyeonggi-do|Suwon, Korea, Republic of|Suwon, Korea, Republic of|Suwon, Korea, Republic of
Introduction:
Music, ubiquitous in human cultures across history, plays a crucial role in various therapeutic contexts, including stress relief, pain management, and mental health interventions (Blood, A. J., & Zatorre, R. J., 2001; Koelsch, S. 2009). As one of the well-established methods of pain relief, music holds therapeutic potential for managing pain. Music-induced analgesia (MIA), the subjective reduction of pain perception after listening to music, has been reported not only in healthy individuals (Roy, M. et al., 2008) but also in those with chronic pain conditions, such as low back pain, osteoarthritis, and fibromyalgia (Pando-Naude, V. et al., 2019). Previous research has demonstrated that self-selected or personally preferred music is particularly effective in enhancing this MIA effect (Lunde, S. J. et al., 2019), suggesting musical pleasure may play a crucial role in mediating the effects of music on pain reduction. In this study, we investigate the role of musical pleasure in MIA and its brain correlates, aiming to uncover how pleasurable music modulates pain.
Methods:
Fifty-five healthy right-handed participants (23 females, M = 22.42, SD = 2.12 years) completed three sessions: one behavioral session and two fMRI sessions. Prior to arriving at the lab, participants selected six personally pleasant pieces of music. To compare the effect of musical pleasure while controlling for other musical components, scrambled versions of these music pieces were created by splitting tracks into segments of varying lengths and shuffling them at random. In the first session, participants continuously rated their musical pleasure while listening to both the original and scrambled music. In the second and third sessions, participants underwent two fMRI pain experiments (Fig. 1a): one involving oral capsaicin-induced tonic pain and the other involving phasic heat pain, with the order of sessions counterbalanced across participants. In both capsaicin and heat fMRI sessions, one run was dedicated to music alone, without noxious stimuli. In the heat session, participants underwent four runs, during which they received 12 seconds of heat stimulation (45-48°C) on their forearms in each trial. One of these runs was conducted without music (silence condition), while the other three included both original and scrambled music (two pieces each). For the current study, we analyzed data from music and heat runs.
·Figure1. Experimental paradigm and behavioral results
Results:
Behavioral results showed that the participants reported significantly higher musical pleasure for original music compared to scrambled music (t(54) = 17.53, p < 0.0001; Fig. 1b; left panel). In the heat fMRI session, participants rated pain intensity significantly lower when listening to original music, followed by scrambled music, and then silence, in that order (b = 0.07, t = 7.35, p < 0.00013). Notably, mediation analysis revealed musical pleasure significantly mediated the effects of music type on pain ratings, as indicated by the significant indirect effect (Path ab = -0.01, p = 0.0278) (Fig. 1b; right panel). These findings suggest that listening to self-selected music reduces pain through enhancing musical pleasure. We also examined group-level differences in brain activation between music conditions in both the music-only and heat runs. In the music-only runs, the contrast between original and scrambled music revealed significantly higher activations in the ventral attention network regions, including the anterior insula, mid-cingulate cortex, and supplementary motor area, as well as in the thalamus and basal ganglia. In contrast, during the heat runs, the original vs. scrambled music contrast showed significant activations in the fronto-parietal and default-mode network regions, including the lateral prefrontal cortex and angular gyrus (Fig. 2).
·Figure2. Group-level analysis results
Conclusions:
These findings underscore the potential of music as an effective tool for pain reduction. We plan to further investigate the brain mediators of MIA and develop a predictive model of musical pleasure.
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Music 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception: Pain and Visceral
Keywords:
Computational Neuroscience
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Pain
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Abstract Information
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Blood, A. J., & Zatorre, R. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 98(20), 11818-11823.
Koelsch, S. (2009). A neuroscientific perspective on music therapy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1), 374-384.
Roy, M., Peretz, I., & Rainville, P. (2008). Emotional valence contributes to music-induced analgesia. Pain, 134(1-2), 140-147.
Lunde, S. J., Vuust, P., Garza-Villarreal, E. A., & Vase, L. (2019). Music-induced analgesia: how does music relieve pain?. Pain, 160(5), 989-993.