The effects of music on the brain: a chemical cocktail for mental and physical health
Illustration by Aaron Sacco
by Suzanne Hamlin
Back in 2020 during COVID-19 quarantine, I avoided listening to music because of its strong emotional pull. At a time of such uncertainty, my emotions were too close to the surface, and I felt like listening to music, or playing it as a pianist, would cause a crack in my stoic resolve to get through lockdown like it was no big deal. I avoided sad music like I would dodge love songs after a breakup, and happy music had no business being so happy. Not only was I hiding from the many emotions that music brought on, but the fact that I couldn't teach piano lessons in person and couldn’t play music with other people elicited feelings of isolation and sadness. But what I didn’t know was that music may have helped with these feelings, and that’s because of the chemicals the brain produces when listening to it.
How does music affect the brain?
Maybe you’ve noticed how a certain song or piece of music energizes or relaxes you, or you tend to choose an upbeat playlist when exercising. These energizing and relaxing effects are the result of music activating specific regions of the brain: first the auditory cortex, then other areas controlling emotion and movement. In fact, music involves almost all of the brain regions and increases and decreases some of its chemicals. In a wide-ranging 2013 study from Trends in Cognitive Science, Mona Lisa Chanda and Daniel J. Levitin synthesized research from 400 scientific papers about the impacts of music on health through various brain chemicals (including dopamine and natural opioids, cortisol and other stress hormones, serotonin, and oxytocin), finding that music reduces stress and improves mood, immunity, and social bonding.
Dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, motivation, and reward — also boosted by food, sex, and recreational drugs — increases when listening to music, particularly when people listen to music they like. One study published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the dopamine released during music listening causes its associated pleasure. This correlates with an older study from 1980 in Physiological Psychology showing that musical pleasure was blocked by the drug naloxone (used to treat opioid overdoses), which inhibits dopamine.
Music for reducing stress and more
If music elicits pleasure, what about its effects on stress? Studies have found that the stress hormone cortisol decreases when listening to music, a benefit for people with too much stress in their lives. A review from 2018 in Progress in Brain Research looked at 44 previous studies on the impact of music listening in relation to stress and concluded that music in any genre helped reduce stress. Musical genre impacts which brain region is activated during listening, and it also impacts specific brain chemicals.
Dr. Danielle Kelvas, Chief Medical Advisor at Sleepline, explains that “classical music has been shown to increase levels of dopamine, which is associated with pleasure and reward. Pop music has been found to increase levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with social bonding. Electronic music has been found to increase activity in the brain's reward system, while heavy metal has been linked to increases in testosterone and adrenaline.” Maybe artists like Mozart, Madonna, Moby, and Metallica are aware of the chemicals at play with their music.
Serotonin, another neurotransmitter associated with mood, increases when listening to music, as does the bonding hormone oxytocin, which also manages stress and anxiety and improves trust. Listening to music impacts the production of adrenaline, making listeners feel more energetic, and noradrenaline, a chemical involved in the fight-or-flight response and the regulation of blood pressure, as well as arousal, stress, cognition, and attention. Music also has positive effects on immunoglobulins — antibodies involved in immunity. Chanda and Levitin noted that group drumming and singing improved immunity among study participants, and another study discovered that group drumming and singing lowered symptoms of both depression and anxiety.
Mental health and music: a natural pairing
The implications of these studies are wide, especially for mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and stress. A 2017 review in Frontiers of Psychology found that music interventions can help to mitigate depression and another conducted in 2022 for the journal Musicae Scientiae showed that it reduced anxiety. Music could be an easier, non-pharmacological method for coping with mood changes, even as a daily listening practice separate from interventions like music therapy. Kelvas adds, “Music has been found to have a range of positive effects on mental health, including reducing stress, improving mood, and providing a sense of connection with others… and [can] create a sense of well-being and even improve overall physical health. Music can also help to build resilience and provide a sense of control in challenging situations, making it a valuable tool for mental health management.”
What finally got me back into music and back to the piano was songwriting, where I could take my bottled-up anxieties and sadness about the pandemic and turn them into something meaningful. Studies about the benefits of exercise and certain foods for our physical and mental health abound in the media, but news stories touting the benefits of music are less mainstream. Music is an easy fix: hit play and you’re on your way to changing your brain chemicals.