The short version
- In a randomized trial of 83 anxious students, cortisol fell more than twice as much after 24 minutes of personalized music as after pink noise.
- Both groups reported the same improvement in anxiety and mood, so the body and the self-report told different stories.
- The authors call the hormone result preliminary because it depended on how outliers were handled, and a company that sells music-based anxiety software co-funded the work.
Psychologist Frank Russo’s team at Toronto Metropolitan University randomly assigned 83 undergraduates, each reporting at least one recent symptom of generalized anxiety, to 24 minutes of one of two sounds. One group heard music matched to their starting mood that drifted toward a calmer, brighter state, layered with auditory beat stimulation. The other heard pink noise at the same volume. Cortisol fell in both groups, and 15 minutes after listening the drop was more than twice as large after the music. The results appeared on October 18 in the International Journal of Psychophysiology.
Self-reported anxiety, mood and heart rate variability improved about equally in both groups. Brain activity linked to emotional regulation rose slightly after music and fell after noise. The university’s summary gives no exact cortisol figures, and the authors call the biological findings preliminary because the differences changed depending on how statistical outliers were handled. It was one session, in students, and the study cannot yet say whether the personalization or the beats did the work. Matching funds came from LUCID, a company that makes music-based anxiety software.
It echoes our earlier report on music beating water sounds after stress. Here the students felt equally calm after both sounds.
