Episode 493 - Pleasant memories of sound and music relieving pain

There are plenty of tales of music soothing wild beasts, but is there actually a link between music and pain relief? How did researchers quantitatively study the soothing powers of music? What's better for blocking out pain ; Classical music, discordant arrangements or white noise? How does sound dull the effect of pain in mice? Just how good is a bat's auditory long term memory? can you train a bat to recognize the sound of a tasty treat? How do bats process and associate sounds with food?

1. Wenjie Zhou, Chonghuan Ye, Haitao Wang, Yu Mao, Weijia Zhang, An Liu, Chen-Ling Yang, Tianming Li, Lauren Hayashi, Wan Zhao, Lin Chen, Yuanyuan Liu, Wenjuan Tao, Zhi Zhang. Sound induces analgesia through corticothalamic circuits. Science, 2022; 377 (6602): 198 DOI: 10.1126/science.abn4663
2. M. May Dixon, Patricia L. Jones, Michael J. Ryan, Gerald G. Carter, Rachel A. Page. Long-term memory in frog-eating bats. Current Biology, 2022; 32 (12): R557 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.031