{"id":356,"date":"2011-05-21T16:49:45","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T16:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vandfam.net\/dev\/wordpressmu\/college\/?p=356"},"modified":"2011-05-21T16:49:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T16:49:45","slug":"undergraduate-research-music-as-therapy-for-chronic-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Undergraduate research: Music as therapy for chronic pain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alicia Mullis presents her research at the spring Undergraduate Research Symposium. (photo by Donn Young)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The pain was particularly intense when she swam the breaststroke. \u201cMy legs would bend back and my kneecaps would bang against the cartilage,\u201d Alicia Mullis said. \u201cThat\u2019s not supposed to happen. The cap should fit in a nice little groove, but my kneecaps are a little off center.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years Mullis endured chronic pain, some days even struggling to walk. But it was never bad enough to make her stop swimming. As her high school athletic career went on, Mullis did specific exercises to strengthen the knee tendons so that the caps would be more centered.<\/p>\n

At Carolina, the pain had become more manageable \u2013 nothing an ice pack couldn\u2019t handle.<\/p>\n

A recipient of the Dunlevie Honors Undergraduate Research Award, Mullis conducted her own research and wrote an undergraduate thesis on chronic pain.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Mullis, who graduated earlier this month, thinks something beyond modern sports medicine helped her cope with her faulty knees \u2013 playing music.<\/p>\n

Musical evolution<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mullis has played the piano since she was 7 and the clarinet since she was 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cI considered majoring in music,\u201d Mullis said. \u201cBut it\u2019s such a competitive field, and I felt I had other options.\u201d She settled on psychology and biology \u2013 with a minor in Arabic \u2013 and then joined the lab of psychologist Mark Hollins.<\/p>\n

At first Mullis didn\u2019t think playing music had anything to do with relieving her own chronic pain. She just wanted to do research that would have real-life implications for others.<\/p>\n

But during a course on evolutionary psychology, a few short textbook passages piqued her interest in why humans started playing musical instruments. \u201cIt\u2019s a phenomenon that evolutionary psychologists can\u2019t explain,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mullis thought that maybe music had functioned as a kind of pain modulator for humans living tens of thousands of years ago. That is, playing music somehow helped the brain cope with pain.<\/p>\n

She devised a project to test her hypothesis. Mullis recruited 41 UNC students and used a standard survey to sort participants by whether they had chronic pain and whether they played music. She gave each participant two cognitive tests: a letter-counting task and a number-prediction task.<\/p>\n

Researchers in the past had used similar methods to show that chronic pain sufferers struggle with cognitive tasks. And clinical observations showed the same thing, Mullis said. Fibromyalgia patients, for instance, often say they feel like they\u2019re in a fog; their brains don\u2019t function as well as other people\u2019s brains.<\/p>\n

After crunching her data, Mullis found that people who have chronic pain and play music at least once a week did substantially better on cognitive tasks than people who have chronic pain but don\u2019t play music.<\/p>\n

Her results also showed that people without chronic pain who play music didn\u2019t do any better on the cognitive tasks than people without chronic pain who don\u2019t play music. The findings suggest that music had a protective effect against chronic pain.<\/p>\n

The number-prediction task, which involves making decisions, was such a good predictor of musicians maintaining cognitive skills that Mullis hopes the test can be turned into a diagnostic tool.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard sometimes to differentiate between acute and chronic pain,\u201d she said. \u201cThose patients need to be treated differently; a new tool would be enormously helpful to the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brain on music<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mullis said that music as a pain alleviator doesn\u2019t work like a pill or an ice pack.<\/p>\n

When her knee would flare up after swimming laps, she wouldn\u2019t towel off and start playing the clarinet to soothe her ailing knee. Instead, the theory goes, playing music for years helped Mullis\u2019 brain cope with pain and not focus on it.<\/p>\n

Whenever a person experiences the same pain stimulus over and over, neurons in the brain fire in consistent ways, day after day for months or even years. That much is fact. What that does to cognition is unclear, but Mullis said that those consistent neural responses may train the brain to process specific pain stimuli at the expense of other impulses.<\/p>\n

The result would be loss of cognitive ability, which is what those cognition tests predicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about it like a neural rut,\u201d she said. \u201cInteractions between the brain and body become more linear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brain activity becomes simplified and focused, something called decomplexification, and it can lead to problems including lower pain thresholds, sensitivity to light and touch, and emotional sensitivity. Patients say they can\u2019t help but focus on the pain.<\/p>\n

Music, Mullis said, might serve as a kind of countermeasure, a recomplexifier.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrain imaging studies have shown that when people play music, their brains just light up,\u201d Mullis said. Many parts of the brain are involved, because playing music is about complex patterns interacting.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way the brain functions, until chronic pain takes hold. Music may help the ruts from getting too deep, Mullis said, which helps people avoid the worst that can result from chronic pain \u2013 such as a diminished capacity to make decisions or even depression. And that could explain why chronic pain never got the best of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if my data say as much about recomplexification as about music being effective for people with chronic pain,\u201d Mullis said. \u201cBut it\u2019s an interesting idea that\u2019s worth looking into.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mullis might do just that in graduate school. But first she wants to publish her thesis and work for at least a year before choosing a doctoral program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure I choose the right one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

[Editor’s note: This story by Mark Derewicz appeared\u00a0on <\/em>Endeavors’ Web site and later in the <\/em>University Gazette.]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pain was particularly intense when she swam the breaststroke. \u201cMy legs would bend back and my kneecaps would bang against the cartilage,\u201d Alicia Mullis said. \u201cThat\u2019s not supposed to happen. The cap should fit in a nice little groove, but my kneecaps are a little off center.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-natural-sciences-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}