If you feel better when listening to a certain type of music, keep doing so, as a new study concludes that listening to music you enjoy can help improve your mood and reduce anxiety. Dr. Matt McRae from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, states that engaging in music, which includes listening, playing an instrument, or singing, evokes an emotional response that also has a physiological element. McRae adds, "How" and "why" music can elicit this emotional response remains a matter of much debate, but it seems linked to creating an emotional connection between musicians, who craft the sound with emotional intent, and listeners, who receive this emotional information.
According to McRae, the physiological effects of this emotional response involve widespread activation of various areas of the brain and specifically activation of the autonomic nervous system, the "fight or flight" response (sympathetic) during most musical engagement, followed by an increase in "rest and digestion" activity (parasympathetic) after the music stops. McRae explained that whether you prefer contemporary pop, heavy metal, or classical music, there is currently no evidence supporting that one type is better than another, as long as it is music you enjoy.
The research indicates that the most impactful music on health and well-being is the music you love the most, as playing and listening to it corresponds with the strongest emotional and physiological response. Dr. McRae and his colleagues revealed in a recently published paper in JAMA Network Open that regular engagement with music—whether through listening, playing an instrument, or singing—has a real and tangible positive effect on our overall health, appearing to represent about half of the positive health effects of regular exercise.
This study provides the first quantitative evidence of significant clinically relevant improvements in well-being and health-related quality of life associated with music. By focusing on studies that utilized the SF-36— the most commonly used health survey—this analysis allowed for the comparison of the impact of musical interventions and placed it contextually for the first time against established interventions like exercise and weight loss.
Based on the study's findings, Dr. McRae expressed pleasant surprise at discovering that the impact of musical interventions was, on average, substantial, measurable, and of statistical and clinical significance. He explains that the most exciting aspect of these findings is the insights they provide regarding music's potential impact on our overall health. For instance, he adds, "Exercise is linked to preventing 1.6 million deaths annually, and if music has half this effect, we are looking at preventing 800,000 avoidable deaths each year. So, the potential here is exciting if we can find ways to target and maximize the effects of music."
Previous systematic reviews employed narrative methods to compile a wide range of results, often conflicting, regarding the impact of music on health. This study aims to be straightforward and highly quantitative, taking a "cold" and unbiased approach to the effects of music. The researchers acknowledge that individual variability in outcomes is broad, meaning that the effect of engaging with music at the individual level is still unclear, and the research could not provide insights into how to optimize "music prescriptions," such as how much time or how often to engage with music.
McRae states, "The practical implications of these limitations are that while we now have a better sense of the average impact of musical interventions, there is much work to be done to enable reliable music prescriptions to maximize health benefits for a given individual." He adds, "This framework has been theoretically developed to adapt the main ideas from developing credible exercise prescriptions. The immediate next step is to empirically test this prescription framework and see if it can consistently result in positive health outcomes across various real-world settings, such as clinical rehabilitation programs and public health, with the goal of starting implementation by the end of this year."
