Music is cool, and it helps

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Today I was at a concert. Haydn Orchestra in Sterzing. I liked it a lot. Above all a piece from the 20th century that was new to me. First drama, then a short calm, then wilder again. It reminded me of a stormy sea with a brief moment in the eye of the storm. Anyway. I am drifting away from what I actually want to say. Music does not only please you, it also helps you.

What happens in the body is measured quite well by now. With music that grips you, the brain can release dopamine at the peak, in a reward system that partly fires with food as well. The chills some people get marked exactly that moment in the study. The body joins in: during a crescendo the blood vessels in the skin contract and blood pressure rises, fast passages drive up the pulse. And the short calm that struck me has its counterpart in the lab. After a pause, pulse, blood pressure and breathing fall below the starting value.

That a wild piece still does not come across as danger is explained by music psychology with the frame. In a concert hall I know that nothing will happen, and I could get up and leave at any time. In a survey of 772 listeners it was exactly this, that the tension has no consequences in real life, that was the most important reward of sad music.

And music does not only help on an evening like that. After surgery, patients with music need somewhat less pain medication. In hospitals, calm music lowers stress hormones, pulse and blood pressure a little. Music therapy clearly eases depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms somewhat and rather in the short term. And with Parkinson's and after strokes, people walk faster and with longer steps when they have a rhythm in their ear. Most effects are small to medium. But they are there, in hundreds of studies.

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