Your Brain On Music: Can You Really Trip on Just Music Alone?
HARRY SIMMONS, Wavepaths Community Manager •
Music has long played a central role in psychedelic therapy sessions.
It has been suggested that brain regions recruited during music listening overlap at least partially with brain regions altered by the administration of psychedelics, particularly parts of the brain that govern processing of emotions.
Psychedelics are serotonin 2A receptor agonists, this being an important mechanism underlying their effect which in turn influences music perception, with the serotonergic system responding specifically to sound.
Key Takeaways:
- Classic psychedelics are serotonin 2A receptor agonists, an important mechanism underlying their effect which in turn influences music perception.
- The structural correlates associated with the interaction between music and psychedelics are deeply tied to regions involved in emotional processing.
- Music under psychedelics can lead to enhanced connectivity from the parahippocampus towards the visual cortex, which is correlated with enhanced mental imagery and the recollection of autobiographical memories.
- Psychedelics can recruit brain regions involved in the attribution of personal meaning, considered to be conducive to their therapeutic effect.
Music and the Brain: What Happens When You Listen to Music for and as Psychedelic Therapy?
Music-evoked emotions of wonder and transcendence are intensified under LSD, influenced by a musical quality known as timbre. These emotions are core facets of the transformative mystical-type experiences that can be occasioned by psychedelics.
Music, psychedelics and the brain: an overview of brain neurobiology and the role of the serotonin system
Under LSD, listening to music can lead to enhanced information flow from the parahippocampus towards the visual cortex. The parahippocampus is located at a junction between brain regions that play a key role in memory formation and visual processing. The increased connectivity between these brain regions under LSD in combination with a musical stimulus is associated with enhanced mental imagery and recollection of autobiographical memories.
Anti-anxiety effect
Applied in a therapeutic context, music can be powerfully soothing, reducing stress and anxiety, and fostering feelings of calm, safety and support. It has been utilised beneficially in post-operative settings, and can lessen requirements for opioid pain medication and improve patient outcomes. This soothing capacity of music is important for psychedelic therapy during the onset, ascent, and return phases of the psychedelic experience.
Meaning making
LSD can enhance the meaningfulness of music, corresponding to increased blood flow and activity in cortical midline brain regions linked with sound processing, emotion and autobiographical memory. This suggests a synergistic relationship between music and LSD, with attribution of personal meaning during a psychedelic experience considered to be conducive to some of the therapeutic effects.
Facilitating insight, mystical experiences and openness
Music can also have an important effect on the entropic brain state LSD yields – it acts to drive entropic brain dynamics further under the LSD, which in turn predicts subsequent increases in the personality trait openness to experience – this change was only observed when music was a part of the session and was not predicted by the intensity of the drug effect alone. This indicates that music can drive brain dynamics in important ways during a psychedelic experience, with important implications for long-term outcomes. In addition, music has also been demonstrated to help foster the occurrence of mystical-type experiences and insightfulness in psilocybin therapy, this being associated with reductions in clinical symptoms following the session, unlike overall drug intensity, which was not.
Timbre
The musical quality of timbre appears to play an important role in eliciting these heightened emotional states under psychedelics. Timbre is a sound’s tone, or color—essentially it is the sound quality of a note. Timbre differs from pitch, in that two instruments may play a sound at an identical note, or pitch, but result in very different timbres. A study investigating the acute effects of LSD on music-evoked brain activity under naturalistic music listening conditions reported that the most pronounced changes were observed for the “timbral complexity” component in comparison to other aspects of sound quality examined. Timbral complexity refers to the shape and spread of music’s texture, or its spectral distribution.
Researchers found significant positive correlations between changes in music-evoked feelings of wonder and music-evoked brain activity to timbral complexity within brain regions associated with a wide spectrum of highly integrated tasks and higher-level executive functions. Timbre has a unique ability to convey important emotions, and understanding exactly how timbral properties convey emotions has important implications for musical choice in psychedelic therapy.
Can you really trip on just music alone?
Wavepaths CEO and founder, Dr. Mendel Kaelen PhD talks about the power of music and the ability to have profound experiences with music.
Your Brain on Music: Key Takeaways
Psychedelics alter the brain’s processing of music through their action on the serotonin system, which in turn has important implications on the subjective experience of music under their effect, and thus its therapeutic potential.
Through its dynamic and multifaceted power, music can both anchor and propel. It can soothe, enhance emotional states, foster meaningfulness and link up brain regions under the psychedelic which can in turn elicit mental imagery or recall of autobiographical memories, all of which may have therapeutic implications.
Music under psychedelics plays a role in catalysing mystical-type experiences, facilitating psychological insight and eliciting subsequent increases in personality trait openness, which highlight its importance for fostering long-term therapeutic benefits.
The emerging research into the different effects of music, as well as the elements of the music that appear to be associated with therapeutic outcomes such as timbral complexity will help inform a personalised and flexible use of music for/as psychedelic therapy. Music has enraptured and entranced humankind for millenia.
Through cutting edge neuroscience, we are starting to reveal the mechanisms by which music can move us and alter the substrate of a conscious experience. This in turn shed light on the potential clinical applications of music in different contexts.
Discover more in-depth research and education by signing up for Wavepaths community.
Joining will give you access to Wavepaths adaptive, generative music system and community platform for therapists and professionals working with music.
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