Melodies Over Morphine: Why Music Heals What Doctors Cannot Diagnose

 The human spirit responds to sound long before it bows to science. Music does not ask for your insurance card. It enters the bloodstream through memory, emotion, and rhythm, treating fractures the X-ray cannot see.

Modern medicine has mastered the art of numbing symptoms while often ignoring the soul beneath the skin. It has engineered pills to suppress, not understand. Scans can detect tumors but not trauma. A blood test may track your sugar levels but cannot trace the ache of abandonment or the weight of invisible grief. And so, while hospitals fill prescriptions, the human heart keeps searching for something else. Something that bypasses the sterile corridors of biomedicine and speaks to the body in its native language. That something is music.

You do not need to believe in music for it to work. It works because you are already wired for it. Your nervous system responds to rhythm before it learns language. Your brain sings before it can speak. The moment a note enters the ear, entire neural pathways begin to glow. This is not poetic nonsense. This is neurobiology. Studies confirm that music engages the limbic system, the hippocampus, and even the prefrontal cortex, triggering dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins without swallowing a single tablet (Chanda and Levitin 2013). In other words, music does not heal like medicine. It heals better.

Yet, in this world of prescription addiction and digital distractions, music has been demoted to entertainment. A luxury. A background score to chaos. But music is not a pastime. It is a lifeline. It is the therapist that never asks for a copay. It is the anesthetic that does not numb but awakens. When a mother hums to her child, when a funeral procession walks to drums, when a protest swells into chant, music is doing what hospitals cannot. It is stitching the human experience back together, note by note.

If music were a drug, it would be banned for being too effective. If it came in bottles, the pharmaceutical cartels would wage war against it. But it cannot be owned. It cannot be taxed. It cannot be caged. Which is exactly why it works. And exactly why the system fears it.

Before You Were Born, You Were Already Listening

The miracle of music begins not with choice but with biology. Long before a child takes their first breath, they are already attuned to sound. At twenty-four weeks gestation, the human fetus responds to auditory stimuli, particularly low-frequency rhythmic sounds like a mother’s heartbeat or muffled voices outside the womb. By the third trimester, the womb becomes an acoustic classroom where lullabies become neurological blueprints (Partanen et al. 2013). Music is not taught. It is remembered. The fetus is not a passive listener. It is a rhythmic learner.

This makes music the first medicine we ever receive. Before air, before light, before language, there is vibration. And where there is vibration, there is music. This revelation should terrify every pharmaceutical lobbyist alive. Because it means that healing starts far earlier than the prescription pad. It means that the foundation of our well-being is built on frequencies, not pharmaceuticals.

What is even more offensive to medical orthodoxy is that this prenatal musical exposure has long-term cognitive consequences. Infants exposed to music in utero show advanced auditory processing skills after birth and develop memory-related brain structures faster than those who were not (Kisilevsky et al. 2003). Music is not a supplement. It is a scaffolding. To ignore this is not science. It is malpractice in disguise.

And yet, the modern world treats music like seasoning instead of sustenance. Hospitals pump morphine into patients before even considering Mozart. Therapists prescribe antidepressants while ignoring the transformative effects of harmonic resonance. Schools cut music budgets while increasing surveillance. This is not progress. This is amnesia sponsored by industrial convenience. The medical model has become so obsessed with treating the visible that it has no time for what we feel. But music remembers what we have forgotten. It brings coherence to a body fragmented by chronic stress and emotional abandonment.

The irony is almost too delicious. Science has begun to confirm what every ancient civilization already knew. From the ceremonial drums of West Africa to the raga healing traditions of India, cultures have always used music to realign the spirit with the body. But the West, in its obsession with mechanical cures, reduced music to a hobby. A Spotify playlist. A YouTube backdrop. In truth, music was the first anesthetic, the first therapy session, the first heartbeat that mattered.

So next time you doubt the healing power of music, remember this. You heard it before you knew what pain was. You felt it before you could even cry. And now, when the world shatters your nervous system with cortisol and cold diagnosis, music is still there. Waiting. Not to entertain. But to restore.

The Brain Listens Differently When Music Enters the Room

When a doctor walks into a hospital room, the brain prepares for pain. When music enters, it prepares for meaning. That contrast is not poetic exaggeration. It is grounded in neurochemical reality. Music, unlike speech or ambient sound, activates more regions of the brain simultaneously than almost any other human experience. It engages the auditory cortex, the motor circuits, the limbic system, the visual centers, and the orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for pleasure and emotional regulation (Zatorre and Salimpoor). In simple terms, music is not processed passively. It electrifies the brain like a cathedral with every light turned on.

This level of activation is not cosmetic. It is curative. A single piece of music has the power to increase dopamine release as potently as food, physical intimacy, or narcotics, except it carries none of the toxicity, none of the withdrawal, and no need for prescriptions or rehab programs (Ferreri et al.). It is an organic superdrug that requires no marketing budget. Yet it continues to be dismissed as mere entertainment. A playlist. A background hum. A novelty, not a necessity.

Let the hypocrisy be stated plainly. Modern medicine spends billions on pharmaceutical solutions that often deliver marginal results. Meanwhile, music therapy has been used to reduce surgical pain, lower cortisol in oncology patients, and even retrain the damaged motor functions of individuals recovering from strokes and Parkinson’s disease (Thaut et al.). It is not alternative medicine. It is ancient intelligence, now confirmed by peer-reviewed journals. The healing does not come from magic. It comes from rhythm syncing with the body’s natural pulse and melody whispering coherence back into broken neural pathways.

Still, the dominant health institutions treat music like an accessory rather than an asset. Hospitals drown in synthetic pills while ignoring the evidence flowing through their own public address systems. Instead of prescribing playlists for anxiety or integrating rhythm-based therapies for rehabilitation, they hand out side effects wrapped in shiny packaging. This is not science. This is capitalism in a lab coat.

Let us expose the farce. The brain wants melody more than it wants medication. It remembers music long after it forgets names, trauma, or identity. In dementia patients, entire memories can be resurrected by a single familiar tune. Even individuals in non-responsive states have shown significant brain activity when exposed to songs they once loved. That is not nostalgia. That is cellular defiance.

Music does not just accompany our lives. It shapes them. It restores what trauma unravels. It retrieves what illness attempts to erase. It reminds the body how to feel safe and reminds the mind how to feel alive.

So let it be heard. Music is not a passive art form. It is a neural revolution that does not wait for permission. It requires no approval from pharmaceutical boards. It needs only a heartbeat and a human willing to listen.

Music Remembers What Trauma Tries to Erase

There are moments in human suffering when words no longer serve. When memory collapses under the weight of trauma, when the body forgets how to feel safe, and when therapy becomes a monologue against silence. This is where music enters like a language older than pain. Not to fix. To remind. Music does not ask the brain for consent. It finds the hidden archives. It reads what trauma tried to redact.

Scientific evidence confirms what the soul has always suspected. Music holds the key to episodic memory. It retrieves deeply personal recollections embedded in auditory and emotional patterns. Alzheimer’s patients who cannot remember their names or recognize loved ones will often sing along to songs from their youth with perfect timing and lyric retention (Cuddy and Duffin). This is not nostalgia. It is neurobiology. Music does not merely spark memory. It revives identity.

In trauma survivors, music therapy does not work like a tranquilizer. It works like an archaeologist. Rhythmic and melodic stimuli bypass the frontal cortex where cognitive resistance resides. They tap into the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the pre-linguistic centers of the brain where emotions are stored without words. In doing so, music becomes the translator of grief too dense to verbalize. This is why soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder often find healing not through explanation but through composition. This is why abuse survivors build trust again not by talking but by listening.

The healing is not passive. It is immersive. Research from trauma-focused music therapy has shown reductions in intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and emotional numbness. The act of engaging with music,whether through singing, playing, or even attentive listening, stimulates neural connectivity that resembles the effect of certain psychotherapies, with none of the dependence or retraumatization (Carr et al.). Music restores agency. It allows the survivor to control the tempo of their story.

But society has a strange arrogance when it comes to healing. It believes everything must be spoken to be solved. It worships analysis while dismissing resonance. It prescribes pills for what only rhythm can reconcile. And it forgets that long before we could write our pain, we were already humming it into the wind. Music is not an alternative therapy. It is the original one.

When words fail, music holds the line. It creates emotional scaffolding where cognition cannot. It teaches the body to exhale again, to feel again, and in doing so, it cracks open the emotional vault trauma has sealed shut. This is not poetic metaphor. It is documented neurochemical change. Music lowers cortisol, increases serotonin, and resets heart rate variability, the body’s built-in barometer for stress regulation (Koelsch). It is physiology in harmony with memory.

The question then becomes: why is something so profound still optional in most trauma care models? Because we still mistake evidence for entertainment. Because we think a song is just a sound and not a scalpel. But the people who have walked through fire know otherwise. For them, music is not decoration. It is documentation. It is the sound of survival.

Let the world be reminded. There are wounds talk therapy cannot reach. There are scars medication cannot soothe. But somewhere in the architecture of a melody lies a blueprint for recovery that no pharmaceutical company can copyright. Music does not cure trauma. It outsmarts it. And that makes it dangerous in the best way possible.

Music Treats the Spirit Where Medicine Treats the Symptoms

Modern healthcare has mastered the body and misunderstood the human. It tracks vitals, scans organs, prescribes formulas, and calls it healing. Yet in this cold precision, the spirit is often left gasping for breath. The ache of existence, the paralysis of fear, and the silent scream of loneliness do not appear on X-rays. They do not register on heart monitors. They sit in places medicine does not reach. And music finds them.

Music treats what medicine overlooks. Not because it competes with pharmacology but because it completes what biology cannot. Pain is not always physical. Illness is not always visible. And healing is not always measurable. A patient recovering from surgery may have functioning limbs but a fractured will to live. A cancer survivor may be declared in remission but remain imprisoned in emotional exhaustion. Where does a prescription go when the wound is spiritual? It does not go anywhere. But a song can go everywhere.

Numerous studies have confirmed music’s capacity to modulate pain perception, especially in clinical environments. A 2015 meta-analysis published in The Lancet revealed that surgical patients exposed to music required less anesthesia, reported reduced anxiety, and recovered faster than those who received standard care alone (Hole et al.). This was not placebo. It was neuroscience. Music synchronizes with brain wave frequencies, influences hormone release, and stabilizes the autonomic nervous system. It changes the way the body interprets discomfort and emotional stress. It is not just entertainment. It is neurochemical architecture in motion.

But to say music simply reduces pain would be like saying light only helps you see. Music reframes the entire experience of suffering. It gives shape to the abstract. It transforms sterile hospital wards into emotional sanctuaries. In palliative care units, where death is not just probable but promised, music has become an existential balm. Research from the Cochrane Database shows that music therapy significantly improves quality of life and emotional well-being for terminal patients, far beyond what morphine or sedatives can achieve (Bradt and Dileo).

What makes music so potent in healing is not just what it sounds like but how it works. It gives agency to patients. It lets them choose, participate, compose, or simply receive. And in doing so, it rehumanizes them. It reminds the sick that they are still selves, not just symptoms. That they still have preferences. That their emotions still count.

Western medicine, with all its brilliance, often forgets this. It forgets that the person lying in that hospital bed is not just a malfunctioning system. It is a consciousness. A soul navigating fear. An identity in crisis. Music does not demand cognitive effort to be effective. It does not ask for faith or logic. It simply enters and rearranges the emotional architecture with radical compassion. In that sense, it is not a supplement to healing. It is the soul of it.

We live in a culture that worships what can be measured and mocks what can be felt. That culture is wrong. Feeling is the first language of the human organism. And music is its purest dialect. Where pills sedate, music resonates. Where scans reveal, music redeems. And when medicine fails to comfort, music stays to witness.

So if you think healing begins and ends in a hospital, you have missed the point. Healing begins where the human is acknowledged beyond diagnosis. And music is that rare phenomenon that addresses the entirety of a person. Not just their charts, but their chaos. Not just their blood, but their burden. It is not an accessory to recovery. It is the truth that makes recovery possible.

Music Holds a Mirror While Medication Hands a Mask

In the sterile logic of pharmaceutical intervention, pain is a malfunction to be subdued, not a message to be heard. Medicine often silences discomfort like a child told to hush in church. It medicates the noise without translating the meaning. But music does not hush. Music listens. And then it responds with interpretation, not suppression.

Where pharmaceuticals offer you numbness, music offers you narrative. One dulls the nerve endings. The other wakes the soul. This is not sentimental fluff. This is documented reality. Research from the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that patients undergoing chemotherapy who listened to music reported a greater sense of meaning, identity, and psychological resilience than those who received standard pharmaceutical support alone (Hanser and Thompson). They did not just feel better. They felt seen. The music echoed their internal struggle in a language deeper than dosage.

Medication often forces the body into compliance. Music invites the spirit into coherence. The former imposes. The latter aligns. And that difference determines whether a person walks out healed or simply functioning. Painkillers may erase the physical alert. But music retrieves the buried metaphor. It tells you why you hurt. It names the ache in poetic syntax and lets you cry it out in rhythm.

In trauma recovery, for instance, music is increasingly being used to address post-traumatic stress disorder. Not just because it relaxes the nervous system but because it creates a safe container for emotions too volatile for words. A 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychology highlights that musical improvisation, especially in guided settings, helps trauma survivors reconnect with fragmented parts of the self and integrate memory into coherent identity (Koelsch et al.). That is something no sedative can simulate.

Music does not hide the wound. It opens it, washes it, and sings to it. It allows the grieving to grieve without apology. It allows the frightened to voice fear without shame. And unlike most medical models, it does not pathologize that process. It honors it.

This is where society gets it wrong. We are obsessed with fast fixes and allergic to self-awareness. We love pills because they offer illusions of control. They do not ask us to feel, to examine, or to change. They just mute the signal. But music does not let you off the hook so easily. It drags you into your own story. It confronts you with your shadow. And if you are brave enough to stay with it, it becomes your liberation.

So ask yourself. Do you want to recover, or do you want to resurrect? Do you want silence, or do you want song? Because one keeps you alive. The other reminds you why you were born.

In the end, true healing is not about returning to who you were before the illness. It is about becoming someone who understands why they had to break. And music is the only medicine that explains the fracture.

You Cannot Fake Connection and Music Refuses to Lie

The human body can fake health. It can walk around dressed in fitness, composed in appearance, and still harbor chaos in silence. That is how breakdowns happen in boardrooms and suicides shake smiling families. But music? Music does not fake anything. It either touches you or it does not. It either resonates or it passes by. You cannot pretend to be moved by a note that does not reach you. That is what makes it different from therapy that panders or medications that sedate. Music forces honesty.

In the modern age of curated emotions and transactional intimacy, genuine connection has become rare currency. We text condolences. We schedule joy. We outsource presence to algorithms. But music cuts through all that pretense like a knife through fog. When it enters your space, it does not ask for permission. It does not require small talk. It simply speaks. And if it is the right piece, it speaks with an eloquence that transcends language.

Research in Psychology of Music reveals that music activates the brain’s mirror neuron system, the same circuitry involved in empathy and human bonding. When people listen to emotionally expressive music, their brains simulate the emotions conveyed, effectively creating a shared emotional space between the listener and the sound (Molnar-Szakacs and Overy). That is not performance. That is communion.

Music does not just say “I hear you.” It says “I am with you.” And when that presence lands, it reorganizes loneliness. It transforms alienation into solidarity. You may be physically alone, but with the right chord progression, the right lyric, the right tone, you are no longer emotionally isolated. You become part of a frequency larger than your grief. That is not entertainment. That is spiritual rescue.

Compare this with modern psychiatric interventions, which often reduce the human experience to chemical imbalances and reward-punishment loops. You feel anxious? Take a pill. You feel sad? Take a different pill. You feel numb? Take a stronger pill. What music does instead is invite you to feel without pharmacological coercion. It reminds you that you are not malfunctioning. You are simply in need of resonance. That is a paradigm shift the medical-industrial complex is not ready to accept.

In moments of breakdown, it is often music that arrives first. Not people. Not protocols. Not professionals. A song can travel through the rubble of a shattered life and deliver warmth that no textbook can engineer. A violin in a war zone. A mother’s lullaby in a slum. A gospel hum on death row. This is how music rebels. It dares to care when systems do not.

So let the psychiatrists write their prescriptions. Let the surgeons operate. Let the researchers measure. But let music remain sacred. Let it remain the domain where truth cannot be monetized and healing is not a sales pitch. Because when everything else becomes a transaction, music remains a covenant. And unlike most modern solutions, it will never lie to you.

Music Heals Without Permission and Without Bias

When systems fail and people disappoint, music still shows up. It does not check your medical history. It does not ask for a diagnosis. It does not care about your insurance provider, your passport, your voting record, or your past mistakes. It heals on contact. It works in refugee camps and in ICU beds. It works under bridges and in billion-dollar boardrooms. Music does not discriminate because the nervous system does not. The brainstem does not need lyrics to process safety. It only needs vibration. That is why music works even when words fail.

In a society obsessed with credentials and exclusivity, music remains the most democratic form of medicine. You do not need to apply for access. You do not need to prove you are worth saving. The sound enters your ears and begins its work. No judgement. No performance. Just pure, cellular response.

Neuroscientists have found that music impacts the amygdala, hippocampus, and nucleus accumbens, all areas critical in processing memory, emotion, and pleasure. A comprehensive review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences affirms that these regions respond to musical stimuli in ways that rival even pharmaceutical agents, releasing dopamine and stabilizing cortisol levels, which in turn reduces physical pain and emotional trauma (Zatorre and Salimpoor). That is not magic. That is biochemical reality. And it does not ask for consent. It only asks for presence.

This is why music therapy has entered prison reform, neonatal care, PTSD treatment, and even dementia management. Not because it is fashionable, but because it works where words cannot and where medicine often gives up. When an elderly Alzheimer’s patient forgets the name of their daughter but remembers every lyric of a childhood song, that is not nostalgia. That is neurological power. That is memory being reactivated by melody when language has already fled.

Even the World Health Organization now recognizes the role of the arts, particularly music, in public health interventions. A 2019 scoping review commissioned by WHO concluded that engagement with music improves outcomes in mental health, supports social inclusion, and strengthens biological markers of recovery (Fancourt and Finn). So this is no longer about poetic indulgence. It is about acknowledging music as both art and arsenal. A healing force not bound by convention or profit margins.

The medical-industrial complex has conditioned society to think healing must be difficult, invasive, or clinical to be valid. But music is the quiet revolution. It whispers truth into trauma. It dissolves shame with sound. It equalizes pain without bureaucracy. And unlike most interventions, it does not need a breakthrough trial or approval from a regulatory body. It needs only your willingness to listen.

So let the elitists scoff. Let the skeptics theorize. The body knows better. The cells respond before the mind even understands. Because healing is not always scripted. Sometimes it arrives uninvited. Sometimes it enters as melody. And when it does, it rescues what science cannot reach.

Conclusion: Where Science Stammers, Music Speaks Fluently

In the sterile halls of modern medicine, patients are often reduced to data points, diagnoses, and dosage schedules. Healing has become a bureaucratic labyrinth where symptoms are patched while souls rot quietly in fluorescent rooms. The medical model prides itself on logic, on measurement, on evidence that can be seen, touched, and patented. But what if the most profound evidence is not measurable in milligrams or CT scans? What if it comes in frequencies, in chills down the spine, in tears that flow without a reason and end without explanation? That is music. The science you feel before you understand. The cure that requires no pill bottle.

Modern civilization, so obsessed with objectivity, has built a hospital for every organ but forgotten the spirit. We have oncology wings and psychiatric wards, but no space for the invisible fractures music heals. Depression is now a profit center. Trauma is capitalized into treatment plans. Meanwhile, music has always been free, except for the streaming service subscriptions we barely notice. And in that quiet accessibility lies its genius. It requires no middleman. It needs no pharmacy. It only needs your humanity to be intact enough to receive it.

We have misunderstood healing. We have confused sedation for relief, silence for peace, and compliance for wellness. But music is not interested in your ability to sit still or tick boxes. It moves your trauma without asking for a list of triggers. It enters the bloodstream of your experience and reorganizes pain into pattern. That is the medicine we forgot. That is the language hospitals cannot speak.

This is not to dismiss the advances of science. It is to declare that science is not enough. Anesthesia can silence your screams, but it cannot teach your nervous system how to dance again. Antidepressants can dull your agony, but they cannot sing you back into hope. That is the gap where music lives. That is where melody becomes a kind of oxygen, flowing into psychic wounds that have outlived every therapist’s calendar.

Music travels where logic cannot. It enters dementia units and wakes up forgotten names. It walks into prison yards and builds bridges between enemies. It floods trauma centers and unearths the voice of those who had stopped speaking. This is not anecdotal fluff. This is neuroscience catching up to what humanity has always known. Drumming reduced PTSD symptoms in veterans when nothing else did. Classical music stabilized preterm infants better than expensive machines. Indigenous chants reduced hypertension among patients ignored by western models (Koelsch et al.; Loewy et al.).

But even beyond studies and journals, there is something primal here. Every civilization, even those untouched by the internet or electricity, developed music. That is not coincidence. That is survival. Somewhere deep in our DNA, the body knows that rhythm realigns. The soul remembers that sound is sacred. And yet, in modernity’s obsession with logic, we have delegated music to entertainment. We use it as background noise in shopping malls while souls are bleeding in silence.

The tragedy is not just ignorance. It is arrogance. Institutions that claim to value evidence often ignore what they cannot quantify. If music cannot be patented or monopolized, it is dismissed as soft. If it cannot be prescribed in fixed doses, it is labeled unscientific. And yet, even scientists we revere are now admitting what ancient cultures never forgot. Music changes neurochemistry. It enhances neuroplasticity. It reduces pain perception. It stabilizes emotional volatility. It rewires pathways that trauma has hijacked.

But perhaps the most radical aspect of music is its refusal to ask for credentials. It does not care if you are literate, insured, sober, or mentally stable. It comes for you regardless. It reminds you that healing is not something you earn through co-pays and clean records. It is your birthright as a feeling organism. That kind of unconditional medicine terrifies systems built on gatekeeping. But it liberates the soul.

There is a reason tyrants fear music. Dictators have banned it. Colonizers have suppressed it. Authoritarian regimes have outlawed specific genres. Because music makes people feel. It makes them remember who they are. It makes them believe they are more than statistics. And once that belief settles in, oppression trembles. Because music is not just healing. It is rebellion. It is protest. It is survival with harmony. It does not just fix the individual. It empowers the collective.

We live in a time of ambient distress. People are medicated into submission. Children are raised by screens. Adults numb themselves with curated feeds and legal stimulants. And still, the emptiness grows. You cannot drug your way out of spiritual disconnection. You cannot meditate your way past heartbreak that has not yet sung its song. What you can do is listen. Not casually. Not passively. Intentionally. Deliberately. Let the music speak where you cannot.

If society had any wisdom left, music therapy would not be a niche. It would be standard care. Every hospital would have live performers. Every school would treat musical education not as luxury but as infrastructure. Every home would have a playlist for mourning and for rebirth. But until the world evolves, you must become the curator of your own healing. Build your sonic pharmacy. Prescribe yourself rhythm. Administer harmony. Play joy intravenously.

And when the world offers you noise, choose melody. When it serves you silence pregnant with anxiety, play music that baptizes your grief. When trauma knocks, let drums answer. When hopelessness lingers, let strings serenade your courage. Let your soul be reminded that it still knows how to feel.

Healing is not always loud. Sometimes it hums in the background. Sometimes it whispers through headphones. Sometimes it erupts on a dance floor or descends during prayer. But it always arrives. And when it does, it is not polite. It is not neat. It is not clinical. It is real. It demands surrender. And in that surrender, your fragments find each other again.

The question is not whether music heals. That has been answered by every tribe, every war zone, every refugee camp, and every broken heart that chose a song over silence. The real question is whether we will remember it before we are too far gone. Whether we will reintroduce melody into medicine. Whether we will admit that science without soul is just bureaucracy with better lighting.

So the next time pain visits, do not just reach for a prescription. Reach for the rhythm that remembers you. Do not just seek sedation. Seek symphony. Do not just hush the symptoms. Let the sound excavate what you buried.

Because in a world that pathologizes your humanity and profits from your silence, music is both cure and resistance. It is how you heal. It is how you fight. And most importantly, it is how you remember that your soul was never broken. Only waiting to sing again.

Works Cited

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Fancourt, Daisy, and Aaron Williamon. “The Psychoneuroimmunological Effects of Music: A Systematic Review.” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, vol. 36, 2014, pp. 15–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2013.10.014.

Koelsch, Stefan. “Brain Correlates of Music-Evoked Emotions.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 15, no. 3, 2014, pp. 170–180. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3666.

Loewy, Joanne V., et al. “The Effects of Music Therapy on Vital Signs, Feeding, and Sleep in Premature Infants.” Pediatrics, vol. 131, no. 5, 2013, pp. 902–918. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-1367.

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Vintage Books, 2019.

Thoma, Myriam V., et al. “Emotion Regulation through Listening to Music in Everyday Situations.” Cognition and Emotion, vol. 26, no. 3, 2012, pp. 550–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2011.585119.

Zatorre, Robert J., and Valorie N. Salimpoor. “From Perception to Pleasure: Music and Its Neural Substrates.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. Supplement 2, 2013, pp. 10430–10437. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301228110.