Music for Pain Management
Music-based interventions are receiving increasing attention as promising pain management approaches because of their favorable effects on pain and wide appeal to a large number of people.
Music-based interventions in clinical care range from music listening initiated by patients or medical personnel to music therapy offered by board-certified music therapists.
Although the pain-relieving effects of music-based interventions are now well-established, our lack of understanding of their mechanisms of action prevents us from exploiting their full therapeutic potential.
Mechanistic research on music and pain has been scarce.
Multidisciplinary research approaches are essential for advancing mechanistic understanding and, ultimately, optimization of music-based interventions for pain.
Improved efficacy of music-based interventions and better understanding of their mechanisms of action will speed up their adoption in clinical care.
This could have important consequences for the millions of people currently living with pain.
Core Investigative Team
Researchers at Drexel University along with partners at the University of Washington, the University of Virginia, the University of California Irvine, Indiana University, and McGill University in Canada form the core investigative team for the Music4Pain Research Network.
Our researchers and collaborators will work closely with the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to:
- Set a formal research agenda
- Build a network of researchers
- Create a visiting scholar program
- Mentor and support early career investigators
- Fund a series of one-year pilot grants over the next five years that will allow researchers to take a multidisciplinary approach to advance mechanistic understanding of music for pain management.
Music4Pain Funding
The Music4Pain Research Network is funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (U24AT012601).