Music and Health: Biological Foundations and Applications

Daniel L. Bowling

Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA)

Every day, hundreds of millions of people turn to music to regulate their mood, take pleasure, and socialize. These effects apply directly to core dimensions of mental health, including affect, reward, and social functioning. This correspondence is attracting attention from public and private investors (e.g., the National Institutes of Health and Universal Music Group). The evidence at hand includes hundreds of controlled trials examining music therapies, meta-analyses of which show clinically significant effects across a broad range of major functional disorders (e.g., of mood, anxiety, sociality, psychosis, and dementia). Building on this success, a variety of new and developing music-based treatments are being sold and tested in support of health and wellness. In this talk, I will present our growing understanding of music’s underlying biology alongside recent work to combine music neuroscience, therapy, composition, and technology towards new applications designed to increase treatment access and biomedical integration.