How Western Classical Music Affects the Brain ShanghaiTech Research

TapTechNews August 14th news, on August 9th, the research team of Shanghai University of Science and Technology published a study in the Cell Reports journal of Cell Press, showing how Western classical music has a positive impact on the brain by measuring brain waves and using neuroimaging techniques.

Team Introduction

The author of this paper is Sun Bomin, who is one of the first batch of functional neurosurgeons trained in China (by Professor Xu Jianping, the founder of functional neurosurgery in Anhui Institute of Functional Surgery in China).

He said: Our research integrates the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry and neurosurgery, providing a basis for any study on the interaction between music and emotion. Eventually, we hope to translate our research results into clinical practice and develop convenient and effective music therapy tools and applications.

Research Situation

This study invited 13 patients with refractory depression and implanted electrodes in their brains for the purpose of deep brain stimulation.

The implants were placed in the circuits connecting two areas of the anterior brain - the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Through these implants, the researchers found that the antidepressant effect of music is produced by synchronizing the neural oscillations between the auditory cortex (responsible for processing sensory information) and the reward circuit (responsible for processing emotional information).

Patients in the study were divided into two groups: low music appreciation and high music appreciation. The neural synchrony in the high music appreciation group was more significant and the antidepressant effect was better, while the effect in the low music appreciation group was worse.

The team's future research will focus on several areas. First, their goal is to study how the interaction between music and deep brain structures plays a role in depression. They will also introduce other forms of sensory stimulation, including visual images, to investigate the potential combined therapeutic effects of multiple sensory stimulations on depression.

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