Learning to play a musical instrument offers benefits far beyond musical ability. Studies show it enhances fine motor skills, language, memory, and even cognitive resilience as the brain ages. Observing musicians endure the repetitive movements and occasional pain of practice led researchers to ask whether musical training could also alter how musicians experience pain.
Pain triggers a range of responses in the body and brain, affecting attention, thoughts, and movement. When you touch something hot, for example, pain signals your muscles to pull back, preventing injury. Pain also reduces activity in the motor cortex, the brain region controlling muscles, which helps protect an injured area.
While short-term pain is protective, persistent pain can cause long-term problems. Chronic pain may shrink the brain’s “body map,” the network controlling muscle movement, which can worsen pain and reduce mobility. However, not everyone responds the same way, and some people show greater resilience to pain than others.
Investigating musicians and pain
Researchers wanted to explore whether musical training, which reshapes the brain, could influence pain perception. They studied 40 participants, comparing musicians with non-musicians, and safely induced temporary hand muscle pain using nerve growth factor. This protein causes aching when injected into muscles but does not cause lasting damage.
The team used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to create maps of each participant’s motor cortex, measuring how the brain controlled the hand before and after the pain induction. Measurements were repeated two and eight days later to track changes in brain activity.
Striking differences in response
Before inducing pain, musicians already displayed more finely tuned hand maps than non-musicians, and the degree of refinement correlated with the number of hours they had practiced. After pain induction, musicians reported less discomfort.
While non-musicians’ brain maps shrank after two days of pain, musicians’ maps remained stable. The more extensive the musical training, the lower the pain reported. These results suggest long-term musical training may provide a protective buffer against the usual negative effects of pain, both in perception and brain activity.
Implications for pain resilience
The study shows that experience and training can shape how the brain perceives pain. While music is not a treatment for chronic pain, the findings highlight how brain plasticity may influence resilience to discomfort.
The research team is continuing to investigate whether musical training can also protect against cognitive and attentional changes during chronic pain. Long-term, this may inform therapies that “retrain” the brain to better manage persistent pain.
Musical training may offer benefits beyond skill and cognition, potentially altering how the brain experiences pain. By enhancing motor cortex resilience and fine-tuning neural maps, musicians appear better able to tolerate discomfort. These insights provide new avenues for understanding pain resilience and could inform future therapies for people living with chronic pain.