News Briefs – NOVEMBER 2025
by INELDA
Self-Selected Music Boosts Pain Relief, Research Shows
Laughter may be known as the best medicine, but music is vying for the title. Recent studies have delved into the ways music supports pain reduction, with promising results. One study published in Nature shows that patients’ self-selected music heightened pain tolerance regardless of genre, and another study published in Pain reports that when people listened to music tailored to their personal tempo, pain levels diminished.
“Music is a distractor,” Dr. Caroline Palmer, a psychologist and one of the authors of the Pain study, told the Associated Press. “It draws your focus away from the pain. But it’s doing more than that.” In fact, music may activate or deactivate neural pathways that offer analgesic properties, in addition to shifting people’s lived experience of pain.
The role of self-selection was central to each of the studies. In the Nature research, participants listened to five wide-ranging genres of music (classical, rock, pop, urban, and electronic), finding that the genre mattered less than the participants’ ability to choose what they were listening to. And in the Pain study, researchers determined participants’ spontaneous production rate (SPR), or the tempo each participant regularly produced when asked to create a melody off the cuff. Matching music to each person’s SPR yielded the greatest pain relief.
Dr. Emy van der Valk Bouman, an author of the Nature study, commented that the ability to choose one’s own music also helps activate memories and emotions, helping people self-regulate their pain.
The “Hierarchy” of Pregnancy Loss
While the phrase “end of life” often implies the end of an adult life, pregnancy loss can be tended to by end-of-life doulas as well. A paper published in OMEGA–Journal of Death and Dying examines how pregnancy loss falls into the idea of “hierarchies of loss”—that is, loss that is widely acknowledged versus loss that doesn’t carry the same weight of social legitimacy.
“In the aftermath of a death or loss, effects are experienced on a personal, individual register and in relation to structures and discourses of social life,” the authors write. “It can also classify some losses as inappropriate foci of grief or mourning … . For example, certain relationships, losses, or grieving persons may not be socially recognized and this may have consequences for those who grieve.”
The paper from two researchers based in the United Kingdom delves into the factors that give social legitimacy to pregnancy loss, all while hewing to an earlier concept around grief that indicates that all grief should be socially acknowledged and perceived as valid. For instance, closeness of the relationship to the loss and circumstances surrounding a loss can lend a sense of social legitimacy; a pregnant person who miscarries may be placed higher on the “hierarchy” than, say, that person’s family members, or a person who elects to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons. Developmental status of the pregnancy, secondary losses (e.g. loss of trust in one’s body), and comparative loss also contribute to how a loss is publicly—and sometimes internally—perceived.
Structured Support Helps With Cognitive Intervention
The advice may not be revolutionary, but the stakes are high enough that it may be worth repeating: Lifestyle factors can help ward off dementia, or make people more vulnerable to it. A new study published in JAMA sheds some new light in this area, demonstrating that structured, high-intensity lifestyle interventions are more effective at staving off cognitive decline than self-guided, low-intensity interventions.
More than 2,000 participants who were at risk of cognitive decline received interventions for brain health, including physical activity, cognitive activity, nutrition, social participation, and cardiovascular health monitoring—interventions already established as supporting cognitive health. But one group was left to self-monitor their regimen, attending six peer meetings over two years and choosing their own interventions, while the other group received more structured support, attending 38 facilitated meetings over two years. Both groups saw cognitive improvement, but the people in the structured group received more benefit. People who entered the study with a lower level of baseline cognition reaped greater benefit than those with higher levels.
“It highlights that while not everyone has the same access or ability to adhere to more intensive behavior interventions, even modest changes may protect the brain,” Dr. Laura D. Baker, the researcher who led the study, told a University of Califoria–Davis media outlet. The study is in line with other research supporting the idea of “brain age” and reliable interventions with minimal side effects, as reported by ScienceNews.
Posted 11/11/2025