preview

Write An Essay On Opioids

Satisfactory Essays

A flood of opioids would also explain music's effect on our body. Listening to music is known to raise people's pain thresholds, so much so that in some cases, it can be used to reduce the need for morphine-like painkillers.
Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford thinks Levitin's results, which were presented at the Society for Music Perception and Cognition's conference in Nashville this week, help confirm opioids as the mediator of music's power. His research shows that actively engaging with the music seems to strengthen the effect -- singing, dancing or drumming all raise a person's pain threshold more significantly than just listening.
This is an effect that Tom Fritz at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences …show more content…

Exercising with machines also seems to raise a person's pain threshold more than a standard, music-accompanied work out, they told conference delegates.
Their experiments are further support that opioids are involved. "It's another piece of the puzzle," says Bowling. "You don't need a neuroscientist to tell you that music can be invigorating, intensely pleasurable or sad, but this is an exciting time for research on music's biological foundations."
Fritz is working on software that can provide similar "musical feedback" to users, which he says might help relieve pain for people recovering from strokes or drug addiction. Some hospitals already use music to relieve anxiety before surgery, and pain after. But Sven Bringman of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden says it could be used more. "Music is not used as much as it should be because it takes more of a nurse's time than just giving a sedative."
While music has yet to be fully exploited clinically, Levitin says we routinely take advantage of its effects on our brain. "Many people use music to regulate their mood throughout the day. We use music to create a soundtrack to our lives," he

Get Access