As early as 1960, the journal Science published a paper that found that music can regulate patient emotions during dental procedures. And pointed out that even noise, such as the sound of a surgical drill, can have an analgesic effect. However, for more than half a century, the key factors that sound can reduce pain, and the neural mechanisms of how sound affects our brains to reduce pain, have not been understood. In the new study , published in the journal Science, the researchers first played 3 different types of sounds to mice with inflamed paws: soothing music, incoherent notes, and white noise. It was found that all three sounds were effective in alleviating pain in mice when played at low intensities (about the level of a whisper), but had no significant analgesic effect when played at high intensities. The auditory cortex is the most advanced brain center for sound processing and performs a fine-grained analysis of what you hear. Using viruses as neural tracers, the researchers conducted whole-brain tracking of the output of the auditory cortex in mice and found a large number of auditory cortex neurons projecting to the somatosensory thalamus (responsible for receiving sensory signals from the body, including pain), and found Low-intensity sounds can suppress this projection.
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