Who gets chills—a pleasurable feeling of goose bumps—in response to music, and why? The current study used experience sampling to examine within-person variability in aesthetic chills. For one week, 106 undergraduate participants responded to 10 daily surveys, delivered via their cell phones, about their momentary activities, emotions, and environment, with an emphasis on whether they were list...

BACKGROUND Music listening may reduce the physiological, emotional, and mental effects of distress and anxiety. It is unclear whether music listening may reduce the amount of opioids used for pain management in critical care, postoperative patients or whether music may improve patient experience in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS A total of 41 surgical patients were randomized to eithe...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Listening to music can have powerful physiological and therapeutic effects. Some essential features of the mental mechanism underlying beneficial effects of music are probably strong physiological and emotional associations with music created during the act of music making. Here we tested this hypothesis in a clinical population of polydrug abusers in rehabilitation listenin...

The relation between music listening and stress is inconsistently reported across studies, with the major part of studies being set in experimental settings. Furthermore, the psychobiological mechanisms for a potential stress-reducing effect remain unclear. We examined the potential stress-reducing effect of music listening in everyday life using both subjective and objective indicators of stre...

Does music make you smarter? Music listening and music lessons have been claimed to confer intellectual advantages. Any association between music and intellectual functioning would be notable only if the benefits apply reliably to nonmusical abilities and if music is unique in producing the effects. The available evidence indicates that music listening leads to enhanced performance on a variety...

OBJECTIVES We aim to review trials of the effectiveness of music listening in reducing depressive symptoms in adults, and identify areas requiring further study. BACKGROUND Little is known about the efficacy of music listening in the mediation of depressive symptoms. METHODS We systematically search 9 databases and reviewed 17 studies included randomized controlled and quasi-experimental tr...

The measurement of brain activation during music listening is a topic that is attracting increased attention from many researchers. Because of their high spatial accuracy, functional MRI measurements are often used for measuring brain activation in the context of music listening. However, this technique faces the issues of contaminating scanner noise and an uncomfortable experimental environmen...

BACKGROUND Anecdotal evidence suggests that hearing loss interferes with the enjoyment of music, although it is not known how widespread this problem currently is. PURPOSE To estimate the prevalence of music-listening difficulties among a group of elderly hearing aid wearers. RESEARCH DESIGN Interview. Telephone interviews were conducted with patients who wore hearing aids. Questions regard...

This study investigated the effects of voluntarily empathizing with a musical performer (i.e., cognitive empathy) on music-induced emotions and their underlying physiological activity. N = 56 participants watched video-clips of two operatic compositions performed in concerts, with low or high empathy instructions. Heart rate and heart rate variability, skin conductance level (SCL), and respirat...