Québec Science magazine has published its list of 2025’s Top 10 breakthroughs by Quebec researchers, and four McGill research papers are included. Their topics range from prehistoric fossils to female fertility, highlighting the range of expertise at the University.
The paper on “Individualizing musical tempo to spontaneous rates maximizes music-induced hypoalgesia” by Wenbo Yi, Caroline Palmer, Angela Seria, and Mathieu Roy was published in Pain and has been selected by Québec Science as one of the Top 10 scientific discoveries of the year.
When using music to alleviate pain, tempo matters
Research over the past decade has shown that whether we speak, sing, play an instrument or just tap along to music, we each have our own characteristic rhythm. Known as our spontaneous production rate, it is thought to be tied to our circadian rhythms.
A McGill research team discovered that music played at this rate has the best chance of providing pain relief, suggesting it may be possible to reduce a patient’s level of pain by taking a piece of music they like and adjusting the tempo to match.
“It is possible the neural oscillations that are responsible for driving our preferred tempo at a particular rate are more easily pulled along when a musical tempo is closer to our own natural tempo,” said Mathieu Roy, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill and co-senior author of the research paper, along with Professor Caroline Palmer. “As a result, they are pulled away from the neural frequencies associated with pain.” Read more.
Photo: Caroline Palmer, Mathieu Roy and Wenbo Yi
Readers can also vote for their favorite discovery on the journal’s website (in French): https://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/decouvertes2025/
