We bring together music therapy, neuroscience, data science, and engineering to build the computational models, AI tools, and technologies that explain how and why music helps people manage pain.
Our mission is to form a transdisciplinary group of clinicians, musicians, researchers, and people with lived experience to identify and investigate the mechanisms that explain how music-based interventions improve pain-related outcomes.
audioanalgesia is a collaborative research network funded by the National Center for Complementary & Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health (NCCIH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) under Award Number U24AT012602.
Bring signal processing, machine learning, and sensing expertise to an open problem in health. Find publications, methods, and collaborators across the network.
Connect clinical questions to mechanism research, and see how network findings can inform music-based care for people living with pain.
Take part in webinars and working groups, and watch for future pilot funding designed to help new investigators build toward larger studies.
Research Roadmap
From knowing that music helps to understanding how. Our work follows three phases, moving from explanation toward music-based interventions that adapt to each person.
Phase 1
Models that show which features of music, and of the listener, drive changes in pain, so findings can be tested and trusted.
Phase 2
Wearables and digital biomarkers that sense a person’s response and adjust the music as it plays.
Phase 3
Brain imaging, physiology, and molecular data combined into one picture of how music acts on pain.
Program
The network funds small-scale, high-risk and high-reward pilot projects on mechanisms and innovative measurement in music-based pain research.
The 2025-2027 call for applications has closed. Future funding opportunities will be announced here and to network members.
September 2026 · Frontiers in PsychologyA taxonomic framework of music-based intervention components to guide researchRecommendations from the four NIH U24 music research networks.July 2026 · Pain ReportsA scoping review of music-based pain treatment mechanism researchA map of what is known about how music-based interventions reduce pain, and where the gaps are.2025 · LeonardoA collaborative approach in mechanistic music-based intervention and pain researchHow the NCCIH research networks work together.
Core Investigative Team
Debra S. Burns, PhD, MT-BC
Principal Investigator
The University of Memphis
Adam T. Hirsh, PhD
Psychology
Indiana University Indianapolis
Ken Yoshida, PhD
Biomedical Engineering
Purdue University Indianapolis
Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS
Pain and Translational Symptom Science
University of Maryland
Becky Kinkead, PhD
Psychiatry
University of Utah
Joseph J. Schlesinger, MD, FCCM
Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine
Vanderbilt University
Shelley White, PhD, LCSW, OSW-C
Huntsman Cancer Hospital
University of Utah
Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW
Psychiatry
University of California San Diego
Music-Based Interventions and Pain
This project establishes a collaborative network of scientists and clinicians from various disciplines—music therapy, psychology, biomedical engineering, medicine, integrative therapies, molecular toxicology—to address major gaps in our understanding of music-based interventions (MBIs) in chronic pain. By bridging gaps in basic, applied, and clinical research, the project aims to optimize MBI research and accelerate its programs.
The efforts of this Research Network will result in new collaborations, new understandings of the mechanisms of MBIs, and new innovative technologies to measure pain outcomes. Additionally, we will carry out a pilot study program to address important gaps in knowledge related to psychosocial, behavioral, and/or neurophysiological factors related to MBIs’ influence on pain.
This project is made possible by Grant Number U24AT012602 from National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NCCIH, NEA, or the National Institutes of Health.
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