Reducing Pain With Focused Music Listening
Condition: Pain
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Pain-reducing effects of music listening are well-established, but the effects are small and
      their clinical relevance questionable. Recent theoretical advances, however, have proposed
      that synchronizing to music, such as clapping, tapping or dancing, has evolutionarily
      important social effects that are associated with activation of the endogenous opioid system
      (EOS; which supports both analgesia and social bonding). Thus, active sensorimotor
      synchronization to music could have stronger analgesic effects than simply listening to
      music. However, to the best of the investigators' knowledge, the hypothesis of an EOS
      activation by sensorimotor synchronization to music has never been investigated. Accordingly,
      the investigators set up a test with the premise that if sensorimotor synchronization to
      music indeed activates the EOS, then it should have larger pain-reducing effects than simply
      listening to music. Using pressure algometry to the fingernails, specific amounts of pain
      were delivered to healthy adults either during music listening or silence, while either
      performing an active tapping task or a passive control task. As the dependent variable,
      perceived pain was rated on a scale ranging from 1 to 9 (1 = very little, 5 = medium, 9 =
      very strong). In addition, to pain ratings, participants provided ratings of their emotional
      state in terms of pleasantness as well as arousal, and then rated their familiarity with the
      music (also on scales ranging from 1 to 9). Emotion ratings were obtained to explore whether
      the mechanisms driving pain-reducing effects of sensorimotor synchronization to music include
      emotion. At the end of the experiment, participants also rated their preference for the music
      on a scale ranging from 1 to 9 (see Method). Familiarity and preference ratings were obtained
      to elucidate possible contributions of these factors on pain reduction.
    


Intervention name(s): Experimentally-induced pain
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Specific pain levels were applied on the participants' fingernails in each of 40 experimental trials using pressure algometry.
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Intervention model description: The experiment used a 2x2 within-subjects design in which participants either listened to music or underwent a silent control period and either performed an active foot tapping task, or a passive control task with no movement resulting in four experimental trial types: (a) Music Active (music with tapping); (b) Music Passive (music without tapping); (c) Silence Active (silence with tapping); and (d) Silence Passive (silence without tapping). The allocation of the music excerpts to the task (active, passive) was random, and the order of the four experimental trial types was counterbalanced. Specific pain levels were applied on the participants' fingernails in each of 40 experimental trials using pressure algometry.
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment