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The Effects of Music on the Human Stress Response

This is a scientific article that explores some of the stress responses that music can affect in positive ways. This is a technical study as it is intended for peer review by other researchers.

A very brief layperson-friendly summation of the findings is below.

Music listening has been promoted as a means to beneficially impact mental and physical health. However, the existing literature is not comprehensive enough due to various factors such as discrepancies in reports and shortcomings in research methods, such as too small a sample, no monitoring of valid stressors, etc. It was the aim of the authors to address these various shortcomings through a scientifically rigorous study.

The study demonstrated that music listening impacts the psychological stress system as well as the SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System).

Listening to music before a standardized stressor predominantly affected the autonomic nervous system (in terms of a faster recovery) and to a somewhat lesser degree other physiological factors as well.

The study verifies several physiological benefits associated with Music Therapy and Sound Healing.

In the Introduction to the study, the researchers state that

“Prolonged experiences of stress are related to poor individual health and associated with substantial financial costs for the society. As a result, the development of cost effective stress prevention or stress management approaches has become an important endeavor of current research efforts. Music has been shown to beneficially affect stress-related physiological, as well as cognitive, and emotional processes. Thus, the use of listening to music as an economic, non-invasive, and highly accepted intervention tool has received special interest in the management of stress and stress-related health issues.”

Excerpted from the Study.

I wish to thank the authors of the study for their contribution to the fields of psychoacoustics and mind/body transformation.

Here is a link to the study:
The Effect of Music on the Human Stress Response