Impact of Music on First Pain and Temporal Summation of Second Pain

Passive music listening has shown its capacity to soothe pain in several clinical and experimental studies. This phenomenon—known as music-induced analgesia—could partly be explained by the modulation of pain signals in response to the stimulation of brain and brainstem centers. We hypothesized that music-induced analgesia may involve inhibitory descending pain systems. We assessed pain-related responses to endogenous pain control mechanisms known to depend on descending pain modulation: peak of first pain (PP), temporal summation (TS), and diffuse noxious inhibitory control (DNIC). Twenty-seven healthy participants (14 men, 13 women) were exposed to a conditioned pain modulation paradigm during a 20-minute relaxing music session and a silence condition. Pain was continually measured with a visual analogue scale. Pain ratings were significantly lower with music listening (p < .02). Repeated measures ANOVA indicated significant differences between conditions within PP and TS (p < .05) but not in DNIC. Those findings suggested that music listening could strengthen components of the inhibitory descending pain pathways operating at the dorsal spinal cord level.