Brain Study Reveals Benefits of Classical Music on Mood

Published in Cell Reports, the study shows that classical music can lift a person’s mood by improving brain connections

In a recent study titled “Auditory entrainment coordinates cortical-BNST-NAc triple time locking to alleviate the depressive disorder,” researchers found that music caused stronger interactions between brain regions related to sound and pleasure, and that adding low-frequency sound to music increased people’s enjoyment of it. 

This is possible due to the way music synchronizes brain waves between areas processing sound, and the rewards circuit processing emotional information. 

Written by the Chinese scientists Xin Lv, Yuhan Wang, Yingying Zhang, Shuo Ma, Jie Liu, Kuanghao Ye, Yunhao Wu, Valerie Voon, and Bomin Sun, the study focused on a brain circuit (BNST-NAc circuit) connecting two areas of the forebrain, which is involved in voluntary actions, thinking, and processing. 

For the study, a group of patients with treatment-resistant depression had electrodes implanted in the BNST-NAc circuit for deep-brain stimulation. 

To account for participants’ varying levels of music familiarity, 23 participants were divided into the “familiar condition” and the “unfamiliar condition.” Results gained from the 13 participants in the latter condition were used to investigate the influence of the emotional context of music on depressive mood. 

The two classical music excerpts “with distinct emotional contexts” chosen for the study were Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (representing sadness), and the third movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (representing joy and excitement). 

While listening to the third movement of Beethoven’s seventh symphony, the electrode scans on participants revealed that the music boosted the flow of brain waves through the BNST-NAc circuit. 

They also found that inserting low-frequency theta noise into the music increased the enjoyment of the music — theta frequency sounds are associated with the lightest stage of sleep and can induce a meditative effect, Health Day reported.  

Continuing on from this study, the research team plans to study the interaction between music and the deep structures of the brain, plus introduce other sensory stimuli, including visual imagery.

“The BNST-NAc circuit, sometimes referred to as part of the ‘extended amygdala,’ underscores the close relationship between this circuit and the amygdala, a central structure in emotional information processing,” said senior researcher Dr. Bomin Sun, director of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Center for Functional Neurosurgery, in Health Day. 

“By collaborating with clinicians, music therapists, computer scientists and engineers, we plan to develop a series of digital health products based on music therapy, such as smartphone applications and wearable devices,” Sun added. “These products will integrate personalized music recommendations, real-time emotional monitoring and feedback, and virtual-reality multi-sensory experiences to provide convenient and effective self-help tools for managing emotions and improving symptoms in daily life.”