Weekly roundup: Stress-Relieving Music, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Improving Memory

I reported recently on how the brain seems wired for music. And this one just also came across my radar.

What types of music relieve stress?

You may think that it would be slow music — probably leaning more towards classical type — or that New Age music you may hear in meditation groups. This make sense and neuroscientists and Mindlab had previously rated the song Weightless by Marconi Union as the most relaxing song. Not surprising as it was commissioned by the British Academy of Sound Therapy, whose mission is to improve health and well-being using therapeutic sound and therefore carefully designed to induce relaxation.

This style of music is known as ambient, which I also only discovered relatively recently, uses landscapes of sound and can be relaxing and strangely satisfying to listen to. So this seems to be the answer as to what music is the most stress relieving.

Actually, not so, according to Krisna Adiosta of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who has just published his doctoral thesis on precisely this topic. For this he surveyed 470 people and ended up compiling a list of 1’296 songs that people found relieved their stress. And this actually, and maybe surprisingly, covered all genres and…