Photo Credit: Alexander Grey

A scientific review of 57 studies finds that music may do more than distract from pain; it might change the way the brain interprets pain signals.

Scientists reviewing 57 individual studies found that music may do more for your mind and body than just distract from pain—it might actually change how the brain interprets pain signals and how the body responds to them. Factors such as having a say in song choice, listening to pleasant music, and moving in sync with a beat all showed measurable effects in easing pain on their own.

Researchers behind the review, which was published in the medical journal PAIN Reports, looked at decades of studies testing music’s effects on easing pain. The studies covered everything from cold-water hand tests in labs to patients recovering from surgery. Overall, their conclusion contradicts the notion that music simply distracts individuals from discomfort.

Brain scans indicate that music may calm nerve networks linked to the repetitive, inward-focused thinking associated with chronic pain, particularly in people with fibromyalgia. Notably, most of the evidence comes from healthy volunteers experiencing “brief lab pain,” so it is still unclear whether those same effects translate to people with everyday chronic pain.

In the United States, pain treatment still relies heavily on drugs that carry significant risks, including opioids and other pain medications that have been shown to help only a limited number of patients while presenting dangers such as addiction. While music carries little downside, scientists still don’t fully understand why it helps and therefore is treated as a bonus instead of a proper tool for combating pain.

The researchers scoured major databases for studies conducted through February 2026 that tested not only whether music reduces pain but also the mechanisms behind its effects. 57 studies qualified out of 663 records screened, spanning 20 countries with participant counts ranging from 12 to 200.

Most studies only covered short-term lab pain, such as dunking a hand in ice water or applying heat to the skin, rather than tracking persistent daily pain. Of the individuals tested, nearly all were listening to recorded music rather than making music themselves, and only a handful focused on singing or drumming.

The perceived “pleasantness” of the music stood out across studies. Several experiments comparing pleasant and unpleasant music found that the music people enjoyed showed to reduce pain ratings, while disliked music did not—and sometimes even made pain feel worse. One study found that calming nature sounds worked just as well as pleasant music when people rated both as equally enjoyable. That suggests the emotional payoff of a pleasing sound, not just something inherently musical, is the main factor at play.

A smaller set of studies used brain imaging to see what happens while listening to music while experiencing pain. These studies found that music appeared to affect activity in higher-level brain regions linked to emotion, as well as areas involved in the earliest stages of processing pain signals.

Ultimately, the review’s authors stressed that many of the studies they examined suffered from small sample sizes, but “underpowered” studies were excluded from the main results. The authors also noted that studies frequently mismatched their stated goals with their actual statistical methods, such as describing an analysis as testing mediation when only a partial piece of that analysis was actually conducted. Further, inconsistent terminology and vague descriptions of the music used made it difficult to ascertain findings across studies.

Most research relied on healthy volunteers rather than people with ongoing clinical pain, and only a small number of those examined the role that making music plays rather than passive listening. None of the studies involved children.

An important next step, as highlighted by researchers, would be to determine whether findings from studies with healthy adults can be translated to individuals with chronic pain. That’s because pain processing can differ significantly for those dealing with chronic pain.