Reducing Pain With Focused Music Listening (PainMusic)

University of Bergen

Status: Completed

Conditions: Pain

Treatments: Behavioral: Experimentally-induced pain

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05267795

BFS Toppforsk

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Enrollment: 62 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 19 to 35 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years or older
• Healthy

Exclusion criteria

• History of a psychiatric or neurological disease
• History of substance dependence
• use of any prescription drugs
• Hearing impairment
• Musical anhedonia

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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62 participants in 1 patient group

Operationalization

Experimental group

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.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Experimentally-induced pain