How Music Benefits Your Brain and Body
Music makes your brain move
The neuroscience of music is a new field of research. Music and moving to music activate overlapping brain networks involved in emotion, perception, and action. (Foster Vander Elst et al. 2024)
Brain waves actually resonate and correlate with the music and sound you hear. Music perception and performance may be due to how our brains react to sound (Harding et al. 2025).
Music's Greatest Hits Album:
- What is sound anyway?
- Sound reshapes your brain's network
- Does the brain prefer certain music?
- Turn on the tunes to dial down the pain
- Music can reduce anxiety
- Listening to music you like dials in your pleasure center
- Music prevents dementia
- Music helps you exercise longer while enhancing mitochondria
- Music intensifies your brain waves
- What brain regions are activated by music?
- Can music be used in an unhealthy way?
- Susan's music challenge
Marion Post Wolcott (1910–1990) Jitterbugging c1939.
Bonus: Listening to music you like can help you workout longer
Imagine two workout cycling sessions: one in silence, the other while listening to your favorite tunes. When researchers tested this scenario they found that people listening to favorite music cycled for an average of 35.6 minutes. Without music, people only cycled for an average of 29.8 minutes. Music improved endurance by 20% (Danso et al. 2026).
Music did not appear to reduce the physical demands of cycling but instead allowed people to tolerate exercise for longer.
Thomas Couture Drummer Boy c1857 oil on canvas.
Blue Box of science: what is sound?
Sound is made from molecules vibrating at a different frequencies to create waves. Think of throwing a rock into a pond and watching the ripples spread out. Audio frequency is the rate at which the sound waves oscillate or vibrate.
The number of vibrations per second create sound frequency. This is measured in Hertz (Hz) or kilohertz (kHz). People can normally hear frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. The lowest sound waves from 20 Hz to 60 Hz are sub-bass. These are commonly felt more as vibrations more than sound. The highest sound waves we hear are called brilliance (6 kHz to 20 kHz). As people get older they often lose their ability to hear these high notes.
We hear the wave of sound crashing against our ear drums. This moves the fluid inside our eardrums like wind moves water. The movement of the fluid bends the inner hairs in the eardrum. The motion of the hairs is converted to nerve impluses which move into the brain.
Sound therapy is called vibroacoustic therapy (VAT).
How sound reshapes your brain
Your brain is an interface with the external world. Oscillatory brain activity (brain waves) is strongly connected with cognitive processing (discussion Rosso et al. 2025). Your senses, such as hearing, can influence how your body and brain react.
Sound reshapes your brain network. When your brain hears a musical beat or feels a catchy rhythm it doesn't just react to it. Instead, it reorganizes itself in real time, weaving a complex interplay of different brainwaves over multiple brain networks to capture the music (Rosso et al. 2025).
Brain rhythms sync with music to create meaning, movement and emotion. The brain’s neural circuits actually physically resonate when exposed to sounds. Resonance modulates musical pleasure, the sense of timing, and the instinct people have to get down with the beat (discussion Harding et al. 2025). Our bodies and brains become the music.
Resonant music structures like harmony and pulses reflect stable resonant patterns in the brain. These patterns are shared between people who listen to the same musical melody. This experience is universal, meaning it does not rely on shared experiences
Does the brain prefer certain music?
Yes, your brain likes the same music you like! Funny how that works.
Enjoyable music that puts you into a flow is the best. Everyone's brain is different; some may need to warm up to hard rock, fast rap, pop or metal while others prefer instrumental sound tracks, classical music or Golden Oldies. Try out different music to see what works best for you. Check out the new blends!
Henry Hintermeister Jes' Act Nat'chel, Sonny c1934.
Feeling pain? Turn on the tunes.
Listening to music can reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure, and reduce pain. Music can improve sleep quality, uplift your mood, increase mental alertness, and trigger memories. Hearing music affects neurochemical systems (dopamine, cortisol, opioid, serotonin, oxytocin, and similar) related to pleasure; reward and motivation; immunity; stress and arousal level; and social affiliation (Chanda and Levitin 2013).
*Shilo P. "... of all the coping mechanisms for depression I've tried music is the best. I listen to music when I'm out or playing video games or on my phone. Music helps me to clear out the bad thoughts and feelings like magic. I just forget about everything else and focus on the music and it relaxes me."
Want more pain relief? Listening to music you like dulls pain.
People found acute painful stimuli (from a short laser pulse) significantly less painful when listening to background music they liked. The same people reported more pain from the same intensity laser pulse when listening to music they disliked or when they were not listening to music (Lu et al. 2023).
Although this was a small study (14 pairs of people), it had an elegant testing design. Using a pool of 135 women and men; researchers paired up people so that one person's favorite song was the other person's most disliked song. This meant that the music itself was not a factor.
Feel the music to reduce pain more
Lad et al. 2022 reported that music plus vibrations (low-frequency modulations extracted from the songs and applied to wrist) reduced perception of pain in young women and men (34 people, between 19 and 22 years old). Similar to the research reported above (Lu et al. 2023), people felt less pain when listening to a song they liked compared to a song they disliked.
New devices allow you to feel sound through haptic feedback. Haptic feedback is the use of touch (force, vibrations, motions) to communicate with wearers. One common use is a vibrating phone.
Édouard Alexandre Sain Dancing on the terrace (unknown date around 1910) oil on canvas.
, by Edouard Alexandre Sain.jpg)
Constant Aimé Marie Cap (1842-1915) La Petit Orchestre before 1915.
Why does good (to you) music reduce pain?
Listening to preferred music deceased activation within brain areas related to pain. This included the brain areas that encode sensory components of pain (this is the intensity of the pain), such as the right precentral and postcentral gyri; brain areas that relate to the affective components of pain (the unpleasantness of pain) such as the anterior cingulate cortex and the bilateral putamen; and areas associated with motor control and avoidance reactions to pain, such as the left cerebellum (Lu et al. 2023).
The bottom Line: Music calmed down brain areas responsible for pain.
Interactive music combined with exercise reduces anxiety in people with chronic pain
Jymmin is a therapy that modifies exercise equipment to provide musical feedback. Watch video example of Jymmin© and another type of interactive music participation here. You really need to watch and listen to see this interesting concept.
This small study allowed groups of three people (24 women and men, age range 34-64 years) to play music while exercising together. Exercise with musical feedback significantly reduced anxiety in people who had chronic pain when compared to a conventional workout using the same exercise machines with passive music listening (Schneider et al. 2022). Having control over your surroundings can reduce anxiety.
A similar study showed that active seniors (16 men and women, average age 70 years) exercised for longer when Jymmin compared to a conventional workout with passive music listening (Rehfeld et al. 2022). As a bonus, they perceived the longer workout as easier.
Johan 'Mari' Henri ten Kate, The Gambang Player c1885 oil on board.
Listening to music you like dials in your pleasure center
Pleasurable music activates opioid release in the brain areas involved with experiencing pleasure (Putkinen et al. 2025). Music does this by modulating μ-opioid (MOR) system function. This also causes the pleasurable chills people get from listening to great music. Pleasure resulting from listening to favorite music was also associated with brain regions involved in interoception (your body’s internal awareness of internal signals), emotion, and reward.
The μ-opioid system regulates reward systems, modulates social behavior and blocks pain. It reigns over both more complex aesthetic rewards and biologically essential primary rewards.
Worried about dementia? Turn on the radio or pick up a guitar.
Older people (10,893 Australian adults age 70 years or older) who listen to music daily have a lower risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Listening to music all the time; compared with never, rarely or sometimes turning on the tunes; was associated with a 39% decreased risk of dementia and 17% decrease in cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND). CIND is a description for people who have obvious thinking or memory problems but are still able to manage their day to day lives. People who listened to music daily also had better global cognition and memory scores.
Playing an instrument often or all the time was associated with lowering your dementia risk by 35%. There were no changes in CIND or other cognitive test scores.
People who listened to music and played music had a 33% decreased risk of dementia risk and a 22% decreased risk in CIND (Jaffa et al. 2025).
Music can influence mitochondria
Feng et al. 2022 compared the effect of Chinese five element music to Western style heavy-metal and classical music on human embryonic kidney cells. They found that listening to Chinese five-element music significantly increased the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by 17%, glutathione (GSH) by 21% and cell growth rates (14%). Reactive oxygen species (ROS) were significantly decreased by 13%. Interestingly, cells exposed to classical music, had a trend toward increased GSH (8%), although the increased growth rates (14%) did reach significance. heavy-metal music responded with an opposite and significant 16% increase in ROS and a significant 11% reduction in cell viability.
Five Elements Music Therapy (FEMT) uses five notes called gong, zhi, jiao, yu, and shang; which represent the five elements wood, earth, fire, metal, and water.
Music amplifies brain waves
Brain waves tend to synchronize with music. Listening to music in an unconstrained manner increases power in all the different frequency bands measured (the researchers measured the theta, lower alpha, upper alpha, lower beta, and upper beta) (Markovic et al. 2017).
Brain waves are oscillating electrical voltages in the brain that are associated with different brain states. Click here for more on brain waves and how they influence the brain.
Singing bowl sound mediation changes brain waves
During Tibetan (Himalayan) singing bowl sound mediation metal bowls are tapped or rubbed with a wood mallet to make a vibrational sound. Recent research has suggested that listening to these acoustic sounds may decrease stress or increase relaxation. This may be due to brain waves changing from a normal or excited state (beta waves) to a more relaxed state (theta or delta waves) during sound healing (discussion in Goldsby and Goldsby 2020).
Kim et al. 2023 reported that when people listened to a singing bowl (17 healthy women and men, average age 25 years) brain waves synchronized to match the bowl's beat frequency. The singing bowl researchers used produce beats at a frequency of 6.68 Hz. The sound decreased volume gradually (exponentially) and lasted for about 50 second.
As the participants listen to the ringing bowl sound, delta and theta brain waves (which are less than 8 Hz) increased while the higher Hz alpha, beta and gamma waves decreased. Delta and theta waves are associated with sleep and relaxing. Some people were so relaxed that they even fell asleep during the experiment.
Can music be unhealthy?
Sometimes people use music as a crutch. Listening to the wrong music can be an unhealthy coping strategy and make people feel worse.
In an interesting study using Reddit posts, people who used music in an unhealthy way reported music making their mood worse, listening to music in the dark, becoming more depressed while listening, listening to sad music, using music to ruminate, and using music as an escape from reality. They were more likely to listen to negative (sad, depressed, angry) music with lyrical themes of high blame, low optimism, and high self-reference tracks. People seemed to realize that their use of music was a problem but kept doing the same thing over and over (discussion Singh et al. 2023)
People who used music in a healthy way reported using music to relax, heal, regulate mood, and as therapy. They liked sharing music and music videos; and said music made them happy, cry in a good way, or that music kept them alive. They listened to music that had lyrics with higher optimism (hope and motivating themes).
If you find yourself in the trap of listening to music that makes you feel bad change your playlist and/or mix up how you listen to music. If you can't stomach happy songs, try inspirational songs, or sad at first but overcoming obstacles songs, or I'm a bad a** songs, or angry songs. Often depression/listlessness can be transformed by music into anger and/or hope which gives you the energy for overcoming problems.
Just don't listen to the same depressive song for 24-7 in a dark room. As an undergraduate in college, one girl several rooms down from mine listened to the same sad song over and over and over for hours, which turned into days, and finally months. At the time I didn't know what to do about it since I was young and I wasn't friends with her. That was not a good coping strategy. She did finally get help.
Music activates these major brain regions
Music activates the temporal lobe, including the auditory cortex that help process volume, speed, melody, tone and pitch. The brain cells here are sorted by sound frequencies.
Li et al. 2019 reported that the temporal pole is activated when music is combined with an emotional scene (to mimic how music is used in movies or television). The temporal pole extracted social and emotional significance from the pairing, while initiating subcortical structures deep in the brain to generate subjective feelings and bodily responses. The temporal pole is involved in emotional and social behavior, semantic processing, memory, and human language.
The cerebellum helps you dance when you hear music. It processes and regulates rhythm, timing, and physical movement. The cerebellum, specifically the motor cortex, helps you to create flowing, smooth, and integrated movements when hearing or playing music. It works with other parts of the brain to direct rhythmic body movement in response to music. Part of the cerebellum, the inferior frontal gyrus, helps recall memories to remember music lyrics and sounds. It, along with the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, triggers feelings in listeners.
The limbic system reacts emotionally to music resulting in the awe, chills, happiness, sadness, excitement, pleasure and other feelings you get from music.
The parts of the amygdala which are linked to fear are normally inhibited when listening to music.
The hippocampus helps you remember and recognize your favorite songs (or not so favorite songs - the extended version of Baby Shark anyone?). It plays a role in emotions and memories.
The prefrontal cortex actively judges or appraises the music. Give your judgy prefrontal cortex something to do by hitting it with some banging new music.
The brainstem processes some of our unconscious and emotional reactions to tunes.
The prefrontal cortex creates expectations when we listen to music and likes to be surprised when music takes a clever unexpected twist.
The brain's reward system gives us happy thoughts when we listen to music.
Listening to music requires active participation by the brain. It elicits emotional reactions like awe, happiness and empathy. Music can cause physiological changes in the body (discussions Arjmand et al. 2017, Li et al. 2019)
Eli W (14 years old): "Music is a universal language that unites us in ways nothing else really can. ... to be so connected to this universe-uniting rhythm is empowering. Just thinking about the power of sound blows my mind. It's just so insane that something as primitive as a bunch or random noises woven into a pattern can have the power to break through the barriers of human emotion and totally transform someone's life. Music is so innumerably, impressively potent. A song can change your life."
*Names and some minor identifying details in all stories in this website are changed to protect people's privacy.
This information in this website is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Susan's brain change challenge:
Listen to and watch some catchy, silly, funny, weird and creative songs/videos on You Tube
I know everyone advises you to listen to Mozart or other classical music to grow your brain. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with that if it is your jam, but I'm going in a different direction. Listen to music you like and add something different and new.
Challenge your mind by checking out something off ball, weird, funny, and just different. People walk around in little earbud bubbles where they careful curate everything that enters their ears. Free your mind with music you would never normally check out. Even if you hate it, it will expose you to change and get your brain moving. Your brain needs change! You are missing out on some great music (and some crappy music you can make fun of).
Are you older? Listen to modern music. Are you young? Try some oldies. Do you only listen to pop music? Try some German metal (some is very funny). Expand your range with something 180 degrees from your preference. How about folk metal? Europop? Electronic dance music? Country rap? Funk metal? Industrial punk? Rave pop hip hop? Alternate rock pop? Grandpa rap? Whale songs?
Do a challenge with your grandparents or parents: they pick out a song for you to listen to and you pick out one for them to listen to! Have fun and film a reaction video.
A word to the wise: don't let the You Tube or Google algorithm keep feeding you the same 10 songs over and over. Open an incognito browser like DuckDuckGo that does not track you to hear new music. Type in something like "best metalcore of 2025". Randomly click on some new to you stuff to open up your possibilities.
PS I created this website while listening to a wide variety of both very old and very new music (most of it loud). I find music helps me concentrate and I love to find new music.
Everyone has different responses to music and noise, however, and you should do whatever works best for your brain.
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