Audio Therapy Significantly Attenuates Aberrant Mood in Residential Patient Addiction Treatment: Putative Activation of Dopaminergic Pathways in the Meso-Limbic Reward Circuitry of Humans

Abstract

Using fMRI, Menon and Levitin and Salimpoor et al. clearly show that listening to music strongly modulates activity in a network of mesolimbic structures involved in reward processing including the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as well as the hypothalamus, and insula, which are thought to be involved in regulating autonomic and physiological responses to rewarding and emotional stimuli. We hypothesized that patients exposed to Stress & Deep Relaxation using Audio Therapy (music & sound) would show significant improvements in ten withdrawal symptoms systematically assessed supporting a role for this modality in recovery of patients with co-occurring mental illness and addiction. Thus our laboratory embarked on the evaluation of pleasant audio therapy in addicted patients undergoing recovery in our in-patient facility. We found significant pre to post Stress & Deep Relaxation using Audio Therapy (music & sound) in 76 drug dependent patients. Significant (at least p <.00001) improvements from pretreatment to post-treatment were found for all ten of the withdrawal symptoms assessed, including the following behaviors and physical ailments: cravings; stress; depression; mood swing; anxious; resentful; anger; fearful; body aches and headaches. This analysis was obtained one-hour –half after the audio therapy and was compared to the initial Pre - ten - point score. We believe that this form of therapy, and specifically the Prescription Audio, is an excellent adjunct to treatment. Audio therapy, and specifically music, has been shown in the literature to potentiate the effects of dopamine. Listening to music elicits a response in centers of the brain associated with the experience of pleasure and the mitigation of stress. Our work is in agreement with Ross et al. who found that music therapy appears to be a novel motivational tool in a severely impaired inpatient sample of patients with co-occurring mental illness and addiction.