Until recently, we thought the nervous system was hardwired to sense and perceive pain in a predictable, unchanging way. We now know that changes within our nervous systems affect the way we experience pain. Pain we feel as a result of these adaptations is called neuroplastic pain.

Researchers mapped participants’ pain levels in relation to activity in the prefrontal cortex, brain stem, and spinal cord. Music works as a painkiller, they concluded, by evoking a pleasure-reward response that activates the body’s descending analgesia system. (Essentially, signals from the brain travel through the spinal cord, instructing the