Music Is Medicine: What Emerging Neuroscience Is Teaching Us About Healing

"Where words fail, music speaks." — Hans Christian Andersen

As a medical doctor, I have often felt uneasy calling music medicine. Medicine typically involves prescriptions—tablets, injections, or surgical interventions. These are measured in milligrams, not melodies. Yet, I am fascinated by the idea of music as a healing force.

Through my work with Neurodynamic Breathwork®, I have seen music profoundly alter people's emotional states, breathing patterns, physiology, and nervous systems. Time and again, I have witnessed individuals transition from anxiety to calm, from emotional suppression to expression, and from mental busyness to deep presence. I have no doubt that music plays a crucial role in this transformation. However, I questioned whether modern medicine was ready to embrace this notion.

Recently, I discovered the work of Dr. Mei Rui. For the first time, I saw someone asking the same questions I had been pondering—within one of the world's leading cancer centres: MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. This revelation made me pause. If a respected medical institution is investigating music with the same scientific rigor used to evaluate drugs and surgical interventions, perhaps medicine is finally catching up with something humanity has intuitively known for thousands of years.

Music being used as a therapeutic intervention to support nervous system regulation and healing

The Wisdom We Forgot

Long before MRI scanners, cortisol measurements, and inflammatory biomarkers, every culture understood the power of music. Music has accompanied birth, death, celebration, grief, prayer, and healing throughout human history. For thousands of years, it was never viewed simply as entertainment. It was medicine for the mind, body, and spirit.

Somewhere along the way, during the rise of modern medicine, music became categorised as something pleasant rather than therapeutic—an optional extra rather than an essential part of healing. Today, neuroscience is beginning to close that gap.

Dr. Mei Rui's Vision: Making Music Measurable

Dr. Mei Rui leads the Music-in-Medicine Initiative at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Rather than merely asking whether people enjoy music, her research poses a far more significant question: Can music produce measurable biological changes?

To explore this question, her team employs some of the most sophisticated tools available in modern medicine. Their current Music-STAR clinical trial investigates whether carefully designed live and recorded music interventions can reduce stress before neurosurgery in cancer patients. Researchers measure not only anxiety and pain but also heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol levels, inflammatory biomarkers, proteomics, and metabolomics—seeking objective biological evidence that music influences the healing process. This represents a remarkable shift. Music is no longer merely viewed as emotional support; it is being investigated as a measurable biomedical intervention.

Looking Inside the Brain

Dr. Rui has also led pioneering research involving practising surgeons—one of the most chronically stressed professional groups in healthcare. Using ultra-high-resolution functional MRI, heart rate variability, wearable sleep monitoring, and burnout assessments, her team explored how six weeks of listening to prescribed or self-selected music influenced brain function and wellbeing.

Although this was a small pilot study and many findings were preliminary, the research demonstrated something profoundly important: it is now possible to objectively study how music influences brain connectivity, physiological stress, and emotional regulation using modern neuroscience tools. For decades, we have known that music changes how we feel. Now we are beginning to understand how it changes what happens inside our brains and bodies.

Music Changes Biology

One of the most exciting aspects of this emerging field is that music appears to influence many systems we now recognise as central to health. Research increasingly suggests that music can influence:

• Stress hormone regulation, including cortisol

• Heart rate variability, an important marker of autonomic nervous system balance

• Emotional processing

• Sleep quality

• Functional brain connectivity

• Inflammatory pathways

  
  

While much of this research is still developing and many findings remain preliminary, the direction is unmistakable: music does not simply change our mood—it changes our physiology.

Two Medicines

This research resonates deeply with my experiences in Neurodynamic Breathwork®. When people first hear about breathwork, they understandably focus on the breathing. However, I increasingly think of Neurodynamic Breathwork® as working with two medicines: The breath and the music.

The breath changes physiology directly. Music helps guide the journey. It regulates the nervous system, supports emotional processing, creates psychological safety, and accompanies different phases of the experience. Carefully selected music is not merely playing in the background; it actively shapes the experience. For years, experienced breathwork facilitators have observed this clinically. Emerging neuroscience is now beginning to explain why.

Beyond Entertainment

Perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings about music is that we primarily think of it as entertainment. Of course, music entertains us. But it also comforts us. It helps us grieve. It regulates infants before they understand language. It calms individuals living with dementia when memory itself begins to fade. Music accompanies us through weddings, funerals, and almost every significant transition in life. Music has always interacted with our nervous systems. Modern science is finally giving us the tools to understand how.

A New Era of Medicine

Medicine has always evolved as our ability to measure improves. There was a time when we could not measure blood pressure. Then blood sugar. Then inflammatory markers. Then brain connectivity. Perhaps music has not suddenly become medicine. Perhaps we have simply developed instruments sensitive enough to detect what it has been doing all along.

Final Thoughts

What excites me most about Dr. Mei Rui's work is not simply that music may reduce stress or alter biomarkers. It is that medicine is beginning to recognise something ancient. Healing is not always found inside a bottle. Sometimes it begins with a conversation. Sometimes with a compassionate presence. Sometimes with a breath. And sometimes… it begins with a piece of music.

The Healing Power of Music

In our journey toward self-healing and personal growth, we often overlook the profound impact of music. It can serve as a bridge to our inner wisdom, helping us navigate our emotions and restore balance in our lives. By embracing music as a therapeutic tool, we can enhance our healing experiences and deepen our understanding of ourselves.

As we explore the intersection of music and medicine, let us remain open to the possibilities. The healing journey is not linear; it is a tapestry woven from various threads, including breathwork, music, and our innate ability to heal. Together, we can cultivate a space for growth, healing, and transformation.

References

• Rui M. Music-STAR Trial. MD Anderson Cancer Center.

• ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT06536504.

• Rui M et al. Impact of Prescribed and Self-Selected Music Interventions on Stress, Sleep, Heart Rate Variability, and Brain Connectivity in Surgeons Using 7-Tesla Functional MRI and Wearable Actigraphy. JMIR Formative Research. 2026.