Music can evoke emotion, bring back memories and make us feel connected to others. Research from the Sydney Music, Mind, and Body Lab (SMMBL) is revealing that its influence goes even deeper.
Dr Steffen Herff and his collaborators are investigating how music affects higher-order cognition, including memory, learning, and imagination, and how these effects could be harnessed to support human health and wellbeing.
“Music’s effects on human cognition are profound,” says Dr Herff.
“Music can shape the vividness, sentiment, and spatiotemporal properties of our imagination, and can even be used to induce specific themes, such as social interactions into our thoughts.”
The findings point to music as a potentially powerful tool for influencing what and how we imagine, with implications ranging from everyday wellbeing to creativity and psychological therapies.
One of the most promising areas of the research is music’s potential to alleviate loneliness.
Loneliness is a significant threat to mental and physical wellbeing. At the same time, people frequently describe using music “to keep them company”, a behaviour that became particularly pronounced during periods of isolation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
This led Dr Herff and his collaborators to ask whether music could actually influence our thoughts in ways that create a sense of social connection.
Their research suggests it can.
“We can show that this is not just a figure of speech, but that music is indeed good company,” Dr Herff says.
The team’s research has demonstrated that music can induce thoughts of social interaction, even when listeners are alone. Importantly, this effect can extend across cultural boundaries. Music can encourage social thoughts even when listeners do not understand the language of the lyrics, or when there are no lyrics at all.
These findings open new possibilities for exploring how music could support people experiencing loneliness and social isolation.
Music can shape the vividness, sentiment, and spatiotemporal properties of our imagination, and can even be used to induce specific themes, such as social interactions into our thoughts
Director, Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab
Understanding the relationship between music and people’s thoughts could have implications for mental health interventions that rely on mental imagery.
Mental imagery is an important component of several forms of cognitive behavioural therapy. In imagery exposure therapy, for example, people may mentally simulate an anxiety-inducing situation to gradually learn to overcome their fear. This can be particularly useful when physically recreating a situation is difficult or impossible, such as with a fear of flying.
Imagery rescripting therapy similarly uses mental imagery to help people gain control over distressing memories, thoughts and imagined experiences, including in the treatment of PTSD.
“For both therapies, fine-tuned control over the intensity and content of imagination is critical for success,” says Dr Herff.
“Our work shows that music could be a powerful tool to support such therapies and interventions.”
Because music is deeply embedded in human culture, understanding its effects requires looking beyond a single musical tradition.
SMMBL works with collaborators across Germany, Sweden, France, Hong Kong and beyond to investigate which effects of music are shared across cultures, and which depend on familiarity with a particular musical tradition.
This international approach has shown that music’s ability to induce social thoughts can generalise across cultural boundaries, even when listeners do not understand the lyrics, or when there are no lyrics at all.
It also highlights an important consideration for using music to support wellbeing: there is no universal soundtrack. This not only applies to cultural differences in the use of music, but also simply to personal preference.
“Chances are, any supportive effects of music on your wellbeing will fall flat, if you hate the way it sounds” says Dr Herff.
Understanding these differences could ultimately help researchers develop more targeted ways of using music to support wellbeing.
Music, similar to other forms of art, has always been a tool to support and extend minds and bring communities closer together,
Director, Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab
Music has long been used intuitively to remember, connect, comfort and imagine. Research at SMMBL is helping explain why it can have such a powerful influence on our minds.
For Dr Herff, the goal is to better understand a role music has played in human life for centuries and explore how it might be harnessed to meet the challenges of today.
“Music, similar to other forms of art, has always been a tool to support and extend minds and bring communities closer together,” he says.
“I hope the work we do can play its small part in helping us remember that, and can help unlock music’s potential in the context of our current world.”
Dr Steffen Herff works with health organisations, community partners, arts organisations and researchers seeking to better understand how music can influence cognition, imagination, social connection and wellbeing.
Collaborative research can help explore new ways to harness music’s effects on the mind, support approaches to mental health and wellbeing, and develop evidence-based applications of music that benefit individuals and communities.
Organisations interested in partnering with the University of Sydney on research into music, cognition, mental health and wellbeing are encouraged to get in touch to explore collaboration opportunities.
Learn more about partnership opportunities here.
