Weekly roundup: Stress-Relieving Music, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Improving Memory

I reported just on Friday of how the brain seems wired for music. And this one just also came across my radar.

What types of music relieve stress?

You may think that it would be slow music - probably leaning more towards classical type - or that New Age music you may hear in meditation groups. This make sense and neuroscientists and Mindlab had previously rated the song Weightless by Marconi Union as the most relaxing song. Not surprising as it was commissioned by the British Academy of Sound Therapy, whose mission is to improve health and well-being using therapeutic sound and therefore carefully designed to induce relaxation.

This style of music is known as ambient, which I also only discovered relatively recently, uses landscapes of sound and can be relaxing and strangely satisfying to listen to. So this seems to be the answer as to what music is the most stress relieving.

Actually, not so, according to Krisna Adiosta of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who has just published his doctoral thesis on precisely this topic. For this he surveyed 470 people and ended up compiling a list of 1’296 songs that people found relieved their stress. And this actually, and maybe surprisingly, covered all genres and all styles. But careful analysis showed that they can be grouped into two basic types:

1. Mellow songs in major mode such as Country Roads by John Denver or Memories by Maroon 5

2. More energetic songs in minor mode such as Shape of You by Ed Sheeran and Nothing Else Matters by Metallica

He also conducted a stress test followed by listening to music for 10 minutes to see the effects of music on stress recovery. Music selected by researchers and self-selected music was more effective than random notes - showing that music itself is important. Self selection obviously would lead to personal preferences but this was not significantly more stress reducing than that chosen by researchers (who chose stress-reducing music). However, in this short experiment the extra cognitive load of finding and selecting music may have had an impact.

The key take away is that what you find is stress-relieving, probably is, for you. And that music does help - which may seem obvious.

Being a bit of an audiophile this rings true to me.

Reversing Amnesia After Head Injury

Another one that interests me personally is recovery from traumatic brain injury - this is also particularly relevant in sports that have high risk of repeated small head injuries such as American football, rugby, not to mention boxing, but also in other sports such as soccer. I am an ex-Rugby player and have had a number of mild and more severe concussions in my life. Oh dear!

The verdict on this type of head injury is never pleasant and the general understanding is that even mild brain injuries can have longer lasting impacts than many had assumed. However, a recent piece of research is very good news because it showed a reversal of symptoms - but in mice only.