Your Favorite Song Might Make Pain Hurt Less

No one much likes the pain of a needle stick at a doctor’s office or hospital. But according to a new study in Frontiers in Pain Research, there’s one thing that can ease the sting: music. Listening to just the right soundtrack may be its own kind of anesthetic—one that could be useful for needle insertions and other painful medical procedures.“Although a needle puncture is a minor procedure, the level of pain can vary significantly from person to person,” said radiologist and lead author Dr. Andrei-Cristinel Dragnea of University Hospital Zürich, in a statement that accompanied the release of the study. “In modern medicine, the goal of treating physicians is not only to provide a successful diagnosis and therapy, but also to ensure that the procedure causes as little discomfort as possible.”To conduct their research, Dragnea and his colleagues studied 204 people who were undergoing an MRI of the brain, spine, head, or neck, and divided them into four groups. One group listened to soft relaxation music similar to what’s played during a massage; one listened to a Mozart composition; one listened to their personal favorite songs; and the fourth, a control group, did not listen to mus...