Author: Charles Frank

Psychedelics and music: neuroscience and therapeutic implications

Music Therapy (MT) is defined as a clinical intervention delivered by an accredited music therapist which adopts music as a therapeutic tool to accomplish individualized goals within a safe therapeutic relationship 19,20. In the UK, music therapists register with the Health and Care Professions Council on completion of a 2-year full-time or 3-year part-time masters level training. Furthermore, for the purposes of this narrative review, it was worth including other experimental protocols investigating the therapeutic effects of music and not necessarily involving the participation of an accredited music therapist 21.

1. Thus, data were analyzed with Fisher’s Randomization Resampling Test (FRT, 2000 iterations48), also known as a permutation test or Monte Carlo method, between the NTX and placebo groups in each stimulus condition (pleasure music and neutral music).
2. Three male and one female participant experienced adverse reactions to the naltrexone (NTX) and withdrew from the study, yielding seventeen participants (7 male, 10 female).
3. Although there are some obvious synergies between some music and specific drugs, such as electronic dance music and ecstasy, other links have developed in less obvious ways.

From a cognitive point of view, it is a constructive process “in the sense that individuals perceive the environment from the standpoint of a specific point in space as well as a specific point in their own history” 125 (p.1448). Similarly, the reconstruction of a past event may involve several cognitive strategies including comparison, inference, shrewd guessing, and supposition, to generate a transformed memory 125. On arrival at the laboratory, and after obtaining informed consent, participants confirmed they met the pre-conditions of the study (e.g. no alcohol within 24 hours, no drug use within 10 days; not pregnant). We verified this with urine tests in the laboratory (additional details in the Supplementary Materials).

3. Music Is Able to Cue Emotionally Salient Autobiographical Memories

A subsidiary hypothesis was that these effects would be greater for self-selected pleasurable music than for experimenter-selected neutral music, because the former stimulus has more emotion to attenuate. The protocol received approval from Health Canada and the McGill University Institutional Review Board for Medicine, and was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki41. Drug use in music has been a topic of discussion and debate since at least the 1930s, if not earlier.

These rewards are not directed to any real-life circumstances and thus tend not to evoke the negative aspects of sadness (i.e. grieving over loss of a loved one), which in turn may not elicit the neurochemical response of sadness and depression caused by tragic events. To a certain extent this was verified by Panksepp57 who showed that sad music evokes more intense physiologically pleasurable responses (“chills”) than happy music. Participants were asked to bring to the laboratory two music recordings that reliably produced intense feelings of pleasure for them, including but not limited to the sensation of chills.

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Harry Sumnall is an unpaid member of the UK Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD); an unpaid Trustee of the drug and alcohol charity Mentor UK; and an unpaid Board Member of the European Society for Prevention Research.

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Looking at musical genres and subgenres, multiple hard rock and heavy metal influenced groups have attracted the label of ‘stoner rock’ for frank references to ‘bongs’, ‘pot’, ‘toking’, ‘weed’, et cetera while avoiding mentioning other drugs in the same manner. There is a rich representation of drugs in popular music, and although studies have shown higher levels of drug use in listeners of some genres of music, the relationship is complex. Drug representations may serve to normalise use for some listeners, but drugs and music are powerful ways of strengthening social bonds. They both provide an identity and a sense of connection between people. Music and drugs can bring together people in a political way, too, as the response to attempts to close down illegal raves showed. Amphetamine, for example, is often matched with fast, repetitive music, as it provides stimulation, enabling people to dance quickly.

Partial list of songs referencing drug use

Three recent systematic reviews investigated the efficacy of MT and MBIs on SUD 22,23,47 indicating beneficial effects on several SUD-related outcomes such as depressive symptoms 48,49,50,51, anxiety symptoms 50,52,53, negative emotions (i.e., anger) 50, and subjective feelings of craving 54,55,56. Reductions in craving symptoms have been identified as a main outcome of a Cochrane systematic review when participants received MT in addition to standard care, as compared to participants receiving standard care alone 23. However, despite empirical evidence suggesting that MT/MBIs are effective for SUD individuals, results are not consistently reported across studies that implement heterogeneous methodologies and types of MT/MBIs intervention 22. Likewise, despite reported reductions in participants’ feeling of craving, the mechanism of therapeutic change underlying the effects of MT/MBIs for craving is yet to be identified 23, and future studies, such as randomized control trials adopting neuroscience research methods, may help to do so 46.

In fact, most study participants also said music played an important part in their recovery. Occasionally using substances while enjoying a deeper connection to music isn’t necessarily a problem, but it’s something to be mindful of. You might turn up the radio in bad traffic, jam out to high-energy songs while housecleaning, or listen to soothing music when you feel stressed. If you have any familiarity with how addiction develops, you might know a little about the role dopamine plays.

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Unless listening to music is having a negative impact on your life, there’s no reason to cut back. According to 2015 research, 43 percent of 143 people receiving treatment for a substance use disorder linked a specific type of music with a greater desire to use substances. Substance use enhances the experience of listening to music for some people. Regularly losing track of time when listening to music could create challenges, however, especially when it keeps you from carrying out your responsibilities. Finally, it is in line with influential models of SUD suggesting the need to investigate a personalized clinical approach instead of the standard diagnostic-based view (i.e., the equifinality concept of addictive behavior in 4). Participants were recruited from advertisements placed around McGill University and on the web.

Interestingly, PNNs’ presence throughout the brain is reduced in those animals exposed to enriched environments, possibly boosting plasticity and improving learning performance 118,119,148,149. Thus, the fact that PNNs are highly sensitive to environmental stimulation 148,149 makes it reasonable to develop appropriate non-pharmacological treatments to alter brain plasticity imposed by drugs of abuse. We administered naltrexone hydrochloride (Revia®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) or placebo in a double-blind, counterbalanced fashion (i.e. NTX on Day 1, placebo on day 2, or the reverse order). Day 1 and Day 2 were spaced 7 days apart to allow a drug wash-out period between tests62. To ensure double-blind conditions, a compounding pharmacy (Paylan Pharmacy, Montreal, QC) prepared the naltrexone hydrochloride in an opaque blue, unmarked capsule with cellulose filler, and used identical opaque blue, unmarked capsules with identical cellulose filler as controls.

FRT is a good way to control the type I error rate for multiple comparisons66, it is non-parametric, and so makes no assumptions about the underlying distribution of the data that are common in other inferential statistical tests48,66,67,68. We performed one-tailed tests based on our a priori assumption that ratings for the NTX condition would be attenuated relative to those for the placebo condition. Neuroimaging studies of drug cravings showed changes in areas of the brain that are critical to the reconsolidation process of autobiographical memories suggesting that the recall of emotionally filled moments may underlie the experience of craving. Here, we show a remarkable overlap between these regions of the brain and the areas involved in MEAMs that are generally characterized by emotional content (Table 1). We conducted a narrative overview 25 to summarize findings from different research fields supporting a new idea that has not been discussed yet in the field of MT/MBIs for SUD.