(train engine revving) - Living in New York can feel like you're constantly bombarded with stressful sounds 24/7. (cars hooting) (alarm sounding) So can sounds like these (instruments tinging) help with stress management and anxiety? To get answers, I went to a university lab to get hooked up to a brain recording device.
Feels good. And tracked my heart rate at a sound bath in Brooklyn. During sound baths or sound meditations a facilitator like Mattan Sharvit plays instruments.
(instruments humming) (bright gentle music) (drums banging) (chimes chiming) - So the idea is to really listen to the instruments, trust yourself and let go. - [Narrator] For the nearly two hour group session Mattan told us to move as little as possible. That was actually easier than I anticipated.
(instruments humming) - There is never same feeling. There is never the same trip. It's always different.
- It kind of felt ominous and scary, but then also like really grounding and that was unexpected, but nice. (gentle organ music) To understand the science behind how music affects the brain and body, I drove up to Yale University in New Haven. There I met AZA Allsop, a musician and neuroscientist who studies the effects of music on the brain.
- Some of what sound baths are actually tapping into as well is this idea of meditation. It's sort of getting your mind into a place that is more still. - AZA and Mattan told me that music helps us get into a meditative state more easily.
What about music facilitates that? - Some of it we think is the actual physiology. So the fact that your heart rate is now slowing down, your breathing is slowing down when you have these very long sort of tones.
- [Narrator] During my sound meditation Mattan played tones that lingered for a long time and that were bright and light. This was among like, my lowest heart rates. - So right now I hear a lot of longer, higher frequencies.
- [Narrator] Some studies have found that sounds like these stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. It's a network of nerves that helps run involuntary bodily functions like digestion. When the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system increases blood pressure and heart rate go down and you feel more relaxed.
During my visit, I tried out a session of AZA's online music mindfulness study. In his participants, he's seeing lower levels of perceived stress. I was surprised that I also felt calmer and more relaxed here, even though the setting wasn't as soothing as the Yoga studio.
(drum sounding) But music can also be intense and bring up unsettling emotions. - The harmonics are a little bit more dissonant. There's a little bit more tension there.
- [Narrator] In some cases, sounds with these qualities can even activate the amygdala, which is involved in our fear response. - When we feel that emotion we might cry or have some sort of cathartic experience. - AZA's brain imaging research is trying to decode what kinds of music can improve our mental health and under what circumstances.
One of his initial findings is that certain kinds of music facilitates social connection which can also relieve stress and have positive health benefits. AZA and his team hooked me up to dozens of brain activity sensors to test music's effects on brain activity and how connected I felt to another person. I'm all hooked up.
In this case, head of the brain function lab, neuroscientist Joy Hirsch. Hello. We felt most connected when we were listening to harmonious music like this and looking at each other.
That's in part because the temporal parietal junction, an area that helps with social information processing is more active. And it's less active when the music is dissonant. (gentle music) Feeling connected is important because isolation is a growing mental health problem.
58% of Americans say they're lonely. That figure is even higher among Hispanic and Black adults for whom AZA and other experts say there are big unmet mental health needs. One barrier to accessing sound meditation sessions and their potential benefits is cost.
The other is time. But research shows that even a few minutes of pairing music and mindfulness can help.
