Study: Some sounds relieve pain

A recent study conducted on mice has proven that some sounds have analgesic properties, allowing them to interfere with the brain’s work to reduce the sensation of pain.
And the Italian magazine “Focus” indicated that since the sixties of the last century, people have known that music helps relieve acute and chronic pain, but what was not clear until now is how this happens.
A study, the results of which were published in the journal Science, reported that low-intensity sounds act on a neural level, reducing the activity of pain-sensing neurons in the thalamus (part of the brain).
The researchers suggest that this discovery could help develop new ways to reduce pain in the future that are safer than current methods.
The scientists played three different types of sounds in the presence of a group of mice, which included a piece of classical music, a loud redistribution of the same piece, and a sound that resembled a continuous swish.
Surprisingly, all three sounds, when played at a low pitch similar to a whisper, reduced pain in mice, and contrary to what some might think, increasing the intensity of the sounds had no analgesic effect on the mice.
“We were surprised to see that what matters is the intensity of the sound, not its type or graininess,” says researcher Yuan Yuan Liu, one of the study’s authors.
The researchers then investigated what happened at a neural level in the rodents’ brains and saw that the sound was first received and processed in the auditory cortex, and then passed to the thalamus, which acts as the radio station for receiving sensory signals, including pain.
Quiet rustling sounds reduced the activity of pain-receptive neurons in the thalamus, resulting in an analgesic effect.
It is worth noting that the experiment has so far only been conducted on guinea pigs, and that the human brain can work completely differently, Liu points out that it will be important in the future to understand whether the discovery applies to humans and how to apply it, and whether certain aspects, such as The enjoyment of the sound or its harmony, affect the reduction of pain.