The Dark Side of the Moon: Music may reduce pain but white noise may increase it!

This Letter to the Editor reports findings from a randomized controlled cross-over trial, extending a previous study on the effects of music listening to reduce sensitivity to cold pain stimulation. Within this small replication, participants listened to music or white noise (compared to a silence condition) before nociceptive stimulation by the cold pressor task. Results show that in line with previous research pleasant music may increase pain threshold and tolerance compared to silence. Most interestingly we were able to show that annoying white noise may reduce pain threshold and tolerance. However, due to the small sample size these differences were not statistically significant. Clinical implications of these preliminary results linking pain sensitivity to environmental noise are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]