Rhythmically Enhanced Music as Analgesic for Chronic Pain: A Pilot, Non-Controlled Observational Study

Chronic pain changes brain connectivity, brainwaves, and volume, often resulting in disability, anxiety, and depression. Opioid pain relievers impair function, with risk of addiction. Music analgesia research suggests that music for long-term analgesia includes slow tempo, pleasantness, and self-choice. Hypothesis: individuals listening to self-chosen music with embedded beats ½ h twice a day, could show brainwave entrainment (BWE) at healthy frequencies of healthy descending pain modulatory system. BWE may change brain activity, restoring organization in DPMS altered by chronic pain. Volunteers with chronic pain >1 year participated in a study of 4 weeks of listening to one half hour of music twice a day, and four weeks of non-listening, reporting pain and analgesic use bi-weekly using visual analog scale (VAS) and 0–10 numerical pain scores (NPS), medication types, and dosage. Volunteers selected from 27 half-hour pieces of music in several genres in a mobile app. Isochronic beats were embedded in the music with tempo, key, and isochronic theta frequencies proportional, to enhance the brain’s perception of rhythmic patterns and harmonics. Mean NPS showed a 26% reduction (p = 0.018). Significantly, mean medication dosage declined by over 60% (p = 0.008). Double-blind studies, larger populations are needed in future.