* Your favorite, bittersweet tunes may help relieve pain better than unfamiliar, relaxing music.

Participants in a small study said that pain less unpleasant by about nine points on a 100 point scale when they were listening to their preferred music.

Research has long suggested that music can help lower pain perception without medication and could even help babies tolerate heel-prick blood tests.

Emerging research has also found that music might change our experience of certain types of discomfort.

They are exploring new dimensions of the psychology of music listening that have not been well-studied, especially in the context of pain relief. As a result, the data we have available is limited, although the preliminary results are fairly strong.