Effects of music therapy on the pressure pain threshold, cognitive function, and emotions of college students: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Background:Nonpharmacological interventions, including music therapy, are widely used for pain management and improving cognitive function and emotional well-being. Music therapy has particularly shown significant benefits in chronic pain management.
Objective:This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy in lowering the pressure pain threshold (PPT) and enhancing cognitive function and emotional well-being. The interrelationships among these factors were also investigated.Study design:A randomized controlled trial was employed in this study.
Methods:A total of 54 participants were recruited, with 40 healthy college students randomly assigned to one of two groups. The music therapy group listened to Mozart’s K. 448 for 20 min, whereas the control group listened to it for 2 min. Each participant’s 50-minute session comprised a pre-session, intervention, and post-session, with 15 min for emotional and cognitive assessments of the pre-and post-sessions and 20 min for the intervention. The outcome measures included the PPT, Color-Word Stroop test (CWST), and self-assessment manikin (SAM) score.
Results:The average PPT of most muscles significantly increased in the music therapy group (P < 0.05) than in the control group. In the CWST, the music therapy group performed more accurately than the control group did. The increase in the mean of the SAM score of arousal was also statistically significantly higher in the music therapy group than in the control group. Correlation analysis showed a moderate positive correlation between PPT and SAM.
Conclusion:This study shows that music therapy helps regulate pain sensitivity. It also improves participants’ memory, executive function, and pleasurable and arousal emotions.

Keywords

Music Therapy / Emotion / Pain / Mozart / Color-Word Stroop test

Relevance for clinical practice

This study reveals that music therapy helped regulate pain sensitivity and improved participants’ memory, executive function, and pleasurable and arousal emotions. It also shows that listening to music therapy can be pleasurable and effective. Thus, this study can provide insights into utilizing music therapy as a pain management method for patients. Second, the benefits of music therapy on emotional changes and brain function deserve considerable attention. Thus, in-depth understanding of music therapy-induced emotional changes is necessary.

Ethics approval

Trial registration number: ChiCTR2100047450; The registration date: 2021.06.18. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. The study followed the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki as revised in 2013. Ethical approval for this research was granted by the Human Ethics Committee of Shanghai University of Sport, with the approval number 102772021RT060. This manuscript has the consent of the participant for the use of his/her data and for the publication of the data that appear in the article.

Funding

This study was supported by Shanghai Science and Technology Development Foundation (23DZ1204203; 23DZ1204200).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lu-Ning Jia: Writing-review & editing, Writing-original draft, Validation, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Cheng-Cheng Wu: Writing-review & editing, Visualization, Software, Resources, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Kailimi Li: Writing-original draft, Validation, Resources, Investigation, Formal analysis. Yan-Jun Liu: Investigation. Rui Liu: Investigation. Wei-Yuan Lu: Investigation. Hao-Yu Hu: Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition. Xueqiang Wang: Writing-review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition. All the authors have read and approved the final version of this manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

Not applicable.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.hcr.2024.100009.

Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

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Funding

Shanghai Science and Technology Development Foundation(23DZ1204203)

Shanghai Science and Technology Development Foundation(23DZ1204200)