Why Music Is a Powerful Tool to Quiet Stress in the Brain

Scientists have long known that music can make people feel better when they are stressed. But a new study shows that music does something much deeper than just changing your mood. Researchers in Beijing found that listening to music actually rewires the brain and helps the body recover from stress faster than listening to nature sounds. The study was published Monday in the journal PNAS.

The study was led by Yi Du, a researcher at the Chinese Institute of Sciences in Beijing. She and her team wanted to find out if music had special powers over the brain that other calming sounds did not. They found that it does — and the effects show up in measurable ways. These include a lower heart rate, less skin sweatiness, and lower levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, which is a chemical the body releases when you feel scared or overwhelmed.

To run the experiment, the researchers split participants into two groups. One group of 30 people listened to music, while another group of 30 listened to the sounds of water in nature. Before and after listening, both groups had to do stressful mental math exercises. The scientists then measured how quickly each group recovered from the stress, and the music listeners bounced back faster.

In a second experiment, a different group of participants had their brains scanned using a machine called an fMRI, which stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. This machine shows which parts of the brain are active at any given moment. The scans revealed that music — and not nature sounds — strengthened specific connections between different brain regions. These were pathways linking the parts of the brain that process sound with the parts that control stress and alertness.

Du explained why music seems to work so well at calming the brain. 'After a stressful experience, the brain can remain in a state of high alert,' she said. 'Nature sounds may provide a calming background, but music also takes the brain on an organized journey — tension builds, expectations develop and the tension is eventually resolved.' In other words, the structure of music guides the brain step by step toward a more relaxed state.

The researchers were careful to point out the limits of their study. They only tested healthy young adults dealing with short-term stress, so the results might not apply to people with long-term stress or medical conditions. They also chose the music themselves, and Du noted that a person's favorite songs might have even stronger effects. Still, the study helps explain why people all over the world turn to music when they need to feel calm.