Try This Simple Habit To Help Your Brain Recover From Stress
When a stressful meeting ends, your body may take longer to calm down than your mind. You close your laptop, make tea, or press play on a favorite song, hoping to feel like yourself again. Music may do more than improve your mood.
In recent PNAS research, scientists examined how people recover from acute stress and found that music may help the brain and body settle more quickly.
About the study
Researchers wanted to know whether music has a specific effect on stress recovery or whether any pleasant, calming sound works similarly.
Participants completed a task designed to trigger acute stress, then recovered while listening to either relaxing music or a calming natural sound. The natural sound served as an active comparison rather than silence.
During recovery, researchers used functional MRI to track brain activity. They also measured positive mood, heart rate, and electrodermal activity, an indicator of nervous system arousal that can rise during stress.
Music helped people calm down faster
Compared with natural sounds, music produced a greater improvement in positive mood. It also helped participants' heart rate and nervous system arousal return to normal more quickly.
Brain scans added another clue.
Music changed communication between regions involved in sound, emotion, and signals from the body. One pathway connected the auditory cortex, which processes sound, with the insula and thalamus, which help process emotions and monitor internal bodily states.
The brain wasn't merely hearing music. Areas involved in the stress response appeared to coordinate differently while participants listened.
Why the structure of music may matter
The brain changes also tracked with the music itself. A song that builds, reaches a chorus, and resolves creates moments of tension and release. Researchers found that these moment-to-moment shifts in musical tension aligned with changes in the brain as it moved away from a stressed state.
Participants who showed more of this shift also tended to report greater improvements in positive mood. That doesn't mean every song will calm you. It suggests that the way music unfolds over time may help make it effective during stress recovery.
How to use music to wind down
You don't need a specialized wellness playlist. After a stressful conversation, crowded commute, or long day of meetings, spend a few uninterrupted minutes with music you already find relaxing.
- Choose what calms you: The study didn't identify one ideal genre. A mellow acoustic track or familiar favorite may work just as well for you as classical music.
- Let the song play: Rather than skipping constantly, give the music time to unfold. The brain's response changed along with the music over time.
This was a controlled study of acute stress, not chronic stress or ongoing mental health concerns. More research is needed to determine how the findings apply to everyday life.
The takeaway
Music may help the brain and body recover after a stressful moment, especially as its changing sounds guide the listener through tension and release. If your instinct after a rough day is to press play, science offers a reason to follow it.