Everybody hurts sometimes, sings the rock band R.E.M.

But new research in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research suggests that pain may ease when patients listen to their favorite music.

Canadian researchers built on past work showing that music could be a drug-free pain reliever, looking at what type of music might help the most.

This decreased sensitivity to pain, called hypoalgesia, happens when pain stimuli are disrupted between the point of input and where they are recognized as pain by the conscious mind.

“We show that favorite music chosen by study participants has a much larger effect on acute thermal pain reduction than unfamiliar relaxing music,” lead author Darius Valevicius, a doctoral student at the University of Montreal, said in a journal news release.

The study was carried out at the Roy Pain Lab at McGill University in Montreal. It was published Oct. 25.

“We also found that emotional responses play a very strong role in predicting whether music will have an effect on pain,” Valevicius said.

As part of the study, participants received moderately painful thermal stimuli to the inner forearm. This felt like a hot teacup being held against the skin.

These exposures were paired with music excerpts, including favorite music, control tracks and then silence, each lasting about seven minutes.

Listening to favorite music strongly reduced participants' pain intensity and unpleasantness, the authors found.

Unfamiliar but relaxing tracks did not have the same effect.

“In addition, we used scrambled music, which mimics music in every way except its meaningful structure, and can therefore conclude that it is probably not just distraction or the presence of a sound stimulus that is causing the hypoalgesia,” Valevicius said.

Researchers asked participants about their emotional responses to their favorite music and assigned themes: energizing/activating, happy/cheerful, calming/relaxing and moving/bittersweet.

Different emotional themes varied in reducing pain.

“We found that reports of moving or bittersweet emotional experiences seem to result in lower ratings of pain unpleasantness, which was driven by more intense enjoyment of the music and more musical chills,” Valevicius said.

Musical chills are not entirely understood but suggest a neurophysiological process that effectively blocks pain signals, according to the authors.

These chills can show up as a tingling sensation, shivers or goosebumps.

Researchers noted that one limitation of the study is that music snippets were timed. Listening longer to relaxing music might have stronger effects.

Researchers said it would also be important to study whether benefits were seen with other stimuli such as mechanical stimulation or chronic pain.

“Especially when it comes to the emotion themes in favorite music like moving/bittersweet, we are exploring new dimensions of the psychology of music listening that have not been well-studied, especially in the context of pain relief," Valevicius said. "As a result, the data we have available is limited, although the preliminary results are fairly strong.”