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A while back I had to have a long and unpleasant dental procedure - a bone graft so I could get an implant in an area where the bone had been damaged - this took about 4 hours. During this time the dentist played music - mostly various works selected at random by Hans Zimmer.
At one point things got a bit intense as apparently I have very hard bones - which meant that quite a bit of force was being used. The music playing during this part of the procedure was "No Time for Caution" - which I thought was hilarious... and this fact kind of took my mind off of things.
My now-wife had her wisdom teeth pulled not too long after we met. The oral surgeon suggested music or an audiobook. She chose a Game of Thrones book, which was fine until it got to a torture scene as they were rooting around in her mouth. At which point she was unable to change it. Surprisingly, she still likes the audiobooks.
Hah, that's great.
My dentist has overhead TVs in all of the rooms. Before a longer appointment I asked if I could bring some over-ear headphones to connect to the TV. Surprisingly nobody had asked that before but they were fine with it. The headphones drowned out the drilling and other noises and helped me zone out into some shows.
I'm very short sighted so TVs wouldn't work for me, but I also tend to keep my eyes tight shut in case I see any of the ghastly instruments being used!
[During the bone graft I did open my eyes briefly and saw a small for clearly identifiable circular saw].
Once you get down to bone, especially larger ones, parts of the surgery turns into masonry and carpentry. Including the tools. Power drills are valid tools in joint replacements or fracture stabilization.
Hans Zimmer is my soundtrack of choice for focus (Dune 2 is specially good). Found out that a colleague also had the same taste which was surprising for me, now I imagine it is a common use case for his music.
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In case anyone else is also interested in the "what kind of music", this is straight from the study:
>>The patients were asked to choose their preferred music from two prerecorded instrumental musical pieces instituted as the music therapy. We used non lyrical, soft, slow tempo, relaxing instrumental musical pieces of either flute [click here for audio]or piano [click here for audio]as the choices presented to the patient.The musical pieces were selected based on their slow and meditative tempo (60-100 beats per minute), and only non -lyrical instrumental piano or flute based versions were chosen.The flute version which was preferred by most patients was a combination of Raga Yaman and Raga Kirwani. Raga Yaman is bright and uplifting and Raga Kir wani is known for its soothing and calming effects. Combining these two Hindustani classical ragas provides musically uplifting qualities that could be helpful in reducing the stress associated with surgical procedures and control the hemodynamic responses to surgery. Noise cancelling headphoneswere used to play the instrumental pieces at 60db. The musical piece was played for the entire duration of the surgery on loop using blue tooth connectivity of the headphones with a mobile phone.<<
This is not surprising to me. It’s clearly directly wired into our emotions and nervous system. The nervous system is the key part which is being healed and so stimulation will likely increase the speed of reconnections
I am always so peaceful when listening to heavy metal ... :D
I think the article should focus more on good music elements versus bad music elements. My brain gets annoyed at bad music. Good music can be useful though, in particular for relaxing. I normally dislike jazz-elements, but Sade for instance is acceptable (not pure jazz, but she uses jazzy elements).
I'm more a fan of atmospheric black metal, 80's thrash and prog metal, myself but the psychological effects of listening to death metal have been researched. As previously discussed on Hacker News:
Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18335308
Death metal music inspires joy not violence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19383699
Good music is subjective. Aside from the guitar skills involved in shredding, I think heavy metal is probably the worst genre of music.
I'd say good music is objective. Whether it's hard to play, uses complex polyrhythms etc. which most listeners aren't even aware of - and those people tend to think good music is subjective as they can't perceive the quality, only whether they like it or not. There's also some incredibly skilful metal music with no "shredding" whatsoever.
I don't particularly like Mozart but I'd be an idiot to say it's not good music. On the other hand most people agree Taylor Swift does not make good music, having released lots of samey 4 chord songs with incredibly simple melodies, but she's one of the most listened artists of all time.
If the goal of music is to induce an emotional or intellectual response in a person. Then only the listening person can decide if a response was induced and if that experience impacted them in a positive or negative way. It is the definition of a subjective experience.
The complexity of the music or the technical skill of the artist has nothing to do with it being good or bad. Music anywhere on the spectrum from simple ambient noise to symphonic formalism to simple and infectious can be good or bad based on the taste of the listener.
I think the easiest example there would be the Ramones, who had a lot of songs using thr same four, three, or even two chords with almost no musical complexity, and yet capitvated and inspired a huge number of people and contributed to the foundational sound of later pop and rock music.
Complexity isn’t really the thing either. I’ve heard a ton of terrible but technical songs. Often the coolest songs are remarkably simple, yet manage to do something that feels new. A modern example: https://youtu.be/ga8K_diGviw
This attitude promotes eliteism in music, which I am very opposed to.
Heavy metal/hardcore is good music. Mumble rap is bad music.
Every hospital bed should have a comfortable pair of noise cancelling headphones with a variety of music for patient comfort.
Music might be nice - but I'd prioritize comfy noise cancelling headphones and sleep masks, so the poor patients can get some sleep amid the hospital's beeping gadgets, hard surfaces, and blinkenlights.
I recently attended someone in the hospital. The constant beeping and alarms round the clock prevented any deep sleep for days, and seemed to hinder recovery.
This is a strange feature of hospitals that seems very much like we should know better, yet it’s pervasive. Hospital-acquired delirium is very common and awful, and is associated with bad outcomes after leaving the hospital—higher risk of death, and ongoing dementia-like problems.
We know sleep is so critically important to health, yet everything about most hospitals seems basically incompatible with proper sleep: beeping, lights, middle-of-the-night blood draws, shared rooms, no sense of day or night. Not dissimilar to how how we know that people make terrible decisions when they’re sleep deprived, but continue to have resident doctors work unreasonable hours, this is a status quo bias that harms people.
I have seen the same. Literally crazy, right?
The hospital reminds me of Walmart. Soulless as a bag of hammers but technically proficient and efficient. Carnivorous. Insectile.
That will be $500, plus $2/minute, plus tip.
No thanks, who knows where those ear cups have been!
How did the BBC guy generalize this to all kinds of surgeries? https://mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/view/111...
The paper mentions it being about total IV anaesthesia with propofol, so it should be generalizable to all surgeries with the same anesthetic conditions.
When covid hit, my wife showed stroke symptoms - half her face stopped working (bell's palsy). She had an MRI as part of the diagnostic. As part of it, the operator asked her if she wanted to have some music. Yes please, some soft 80's love songs.
"Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games..."
It was not the calming music she was expecting. She still jokes about it.
The crucial issue is: what kind of music. A lot of what's nowadays called music is actually rather a "sounds with some beat" category.
Music major here. Surprise, all music you know is “sounds with some beat”.
I don’t know what counts as Music to you, but I sure hope you’re not out here trying to promote your particular taste as somehow more refined, because we know a lot about how that is usually just good old classist, generational, or racist biases peeking out.
Who is "we", this magical entity eager to accuse somebody for classism and/or racism? Who are you speaking for? Because for sure not for the entire HN user base
I once played a song that I swear had no verifiable beat. It was some insane Stravinsky piece, sounded like random-ass noise.
But other than weird avant-garde stuff that seems to intentionally try to not have a beat, I agree all music tends to be sounds with some beat.
I think the accusers here are far more likely to be the prejudiced ones
Damn kids and their hibbity hoppity...
Different frequencies, different arrangement of tones and melodies, production and tonal qualities of the recording, and all manner of composition variations have different effects.
It might be crass way to say it, but it's a real worthwhile line of inquiry.
Don't think you can smack any beat on someone's head and it will cure cancer. It's not all equal.
Broad strokes here... if you look at another vibrational medium for parallels: the colour red can indicate something about the chemical contents of a material, and thus the effects it may have. A soft black carrot may not have the same beneficial qualities as a crisp red, purple, or white carrot...
What I’m hearing is “it’s different music.” Why does this justify a reduction to “sounds with a beat”?
In this case, I see multiple parties resorting to pedantry over a legitimate point of discussion, reducing to mud slinging over semantics. The point stands.
What’s the point that stands? How do you justify the initial framing of “sounds over a beat”
I was pretty clear in what I said about music. I wasn't the one who made that remark, so I don't have anything to justify except my own statements.
From the study: "The musical pieces were selected based on their slow and meditative tempo (60-100 beats per minute), and only non -lyrical instrumental piano or flute based versions were chosen.The flute version which was preferred by most patients was a combination of Raga Yaman and Raga Kirwani. Raga Yaman is bright and uplifting and Raga Kir wani is known for its soothing and calming effects. Combining these two Hindustani classical ragas provides musically uplifting qualities that could be helpful in reducing the stress associated with surgical procedures and control the hemodynamic responses to surgery. Noise cancelling headphoneswere used to play the instrumental pieces at 60db."
Music you like.
I think you maybe just don't like it?
If music is so valuable to us humans, then why can't humanity make a site like wikipedia for free music? There is a new generation growing up used to streaming services costing 10 bucks a month.
For flow-compatible electronica, let me add specifically:
https://netlabels.org/electronic-music/
The kids are gonna be alright. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard archives all of their concert tapings on archive.org.
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If it’s so valuable why not pay people that make it?
Lets pay for new music, but how about we have the old stuff be available for free or at cost?
Mickey Mouse made sure to make it as hard as possible.
The public domain exists.
It's called YouTube.
Wikipedia covers music very well. It often doesn't include the music itself, but there's a ton of great writing and history about music.
And many artists still publish CDs, vinyl records, and other physical artifacts just like they have for ~most of our collective lifetimes. If you want new generations to experience that kind of thing, then buy some of it for them to experience.
(Or, you know: If that seems like too much work or too much money, then a streaming subscription is only about 10 bucks a month. I spent a lot more than that on music when I was a kid.)
Music is truly a form of medicine!
Wait till you hear how much we have to pay for other life-saving things like drugs and surgery...
Some find music to be distracting, and therefore don't listen to it. This can build a general dislike of music.
I presume such souls may wither away and die, while in a coma, as a person "helpfully" plays very annoying sounds 24x7.
An alternate, is I do see some very strong preferences for music, with strongly expressed dislikes, even among music lovers. I can imagine the same, someone in a coma giving up and dying, to "get away" from the horror.
(Meant as an amusing thought, I doubt any would vacate this world to escape)
I will have surgery soon. If I ask the surgeon to allow me to listen to music during the surgery, will they allow it? I know it depends on hospital/surgeon/etc, but I'm wondering how much doctors are willing to deviate from protocol in general.
Depends on the surgery and how you want to listen.
Ask to have it played in the room? Sure. Want to listen on your own device? We don’t want to be responsible for loss or damage to that device. Want to use earbuds? Same problem if you’re going to be sedated at all, plus there is also the risk of damage to you if there’s metal anywhere.
One of the most commonly used instruments in surgery is electrocautery. A large pad is placed on (usually) a leg and is one electrode; the other is the instrument tip that does the burning. In theory, any metal in the current path could be a point for arcing. This is why you are asked to remove piercings (see your piercer for silicone plugs to fill the holes during surgeries). We don’t want to torch you.
I’m an anesthesiologist. Some of the risks we are guarding against are more theoretical than practical, but until the 1950’s all useful anesthetic gases were flammable and so protocols were focused on not setting the patients or the operating room on fire, and while we no longer have conductive floors and grounding chains around our waists, we do still worry about setting patients on fire (alcohol is still a common solvent for skin prep solutions). And we don’t want to lose or damage your stuff.
Thanks, that's useful. My procedure is supposed to be 2 hours, laparoscopic. I will ask but without getting my hopes up.
How often do patients request this? Do surgeons ever say no? I would think there's a risk of distraction here.
I have Spotify playlists for each of my regular surgeons. It’s just background music. I only know one who operates in silence.
Not the same but I wore ear buds and listened to music while having a tooth pulled, they didn’t mind.
I wore a VR headset during a "simple" outpatient surgery with local anesthetic. The anesthetic wore off halfway through. The VR headset did not help. I nearly passed out from the pain.
I wonder what kind/style of music was used in the study. A further study might even try comparing different music styles.
>Even as the drugs silence much of her brain, its auditory pathway remains partly active.
oh that's interesting. From headline I had assumed we're talking post op
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Man, all these "study finds" about things that are intuitively obvious to most humans, but others need "studies" to believe.
That isn't the point of studies finding results that seem "intuitive"
The point is that designing laws, regulations, guidelines, safety standards, etc, based on "intuition" is not very rational.
I recall seeing some fairly befuddling ones, like "Study finds that a green environment with plants & flowers reduces depression" etc., how do you even quantify this into numbers?
I tell you I feel good if there's more greenery in the city, you want proof to see "how" good before you build more parks?
Well even if you are sure about your intuition in the knowledge that this confidence by humans has led to huge problems and tragedies in the past, you still want to have a good estimate of the effect size.
How much resource to allocate to this treatment vs other treatments having a positive effect.
Somewhere there ends up being a trade off that I will caricature as "Do we want another hospital OR another park?"
(All the above is idealised, the biggest win that moves the efficient frontier outwards is effectively fighting corruption and being vigilant defending the gains made. This seems to be universal across countries and cultures).
> I recall seeing some fairly befuddling ones, like "Study finds that being in a green environment with plants & flowers reduces depression" etc., how do you even quantify this into numbers?
"Effects of things on depression" doesn't seem like such a crazy thing to need to quantify.
> I tell you I feel good if there's more greenery in the city, you want proof to see "how" good before you build more parks?
A very disingenuous comparison, I think. There's a pretty big difference between that and "What is the effect of certain environmental stimuli during surgery"
I'd really rather not have surgeons explore this question on their own.
I don't disagree that we don't need nearly as much data on some things as others - but I do still want data supporting reasons to spend millions of public dollars.
Sure, but it melts off your face
I think those are a pre-surgery photographs.
why did op take "indian study" out of the title?
Better to link the actual study rather than what a know-nothing hack has to say about it: https://mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/view/111...
Nothing against the BBC but the most thoughtful journalist has all the scientific knowledge of Tarot Reader’s cat.
Anyway, n=56 which is fine I guess but leaves loads of margin for error.
Personally, I had a cystoscope and at the time had fancy health insurance so went to a bling London hospital and the surgeon insisted I listened to music - saying exactly what this article said. It lowers cortisol after, makes you less restless during and improves patient reported outcomes.
You can look up what a cystoscope is, I elected to do it with a blocker rather than with a general anaesthetic. All I will say is that track Shadowboxin’ by GLA is now completely unlistenable for me!
That is so incredibly rude of you. Science communication to the general public is valuable.
Let’s not forget that the author is a person too, just cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean you’ve got any place to talk down on them.
I’m sure the individual writer is smart educated and thoughtful, but the system of science journalism (science communication is different but equally flawed) is so bent-out-of-shape as to be effectively worthless.
Like, take this exact article as a great example. I’m sure Mr Biswas is genuinely very intelligent and thoughtful and a great journalist but having him write a science article is unfair on him and on readers.
Doesn’t even have an undergraduate in a science subject, has never worked as a scientist, and his job is as a national correspondent.
Perhaps my wording prioritised humour over fairness - I’ll take the criticism on that. But I don’t think my core point was wrong. How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?
Finally, I want to stress again - it’s not his fault. The system is broken.
Can you point out the issues with the article?
The core issue is that the BBC report inflates what the study actually shows. The paper is a small, single-centre RCT of one specific surgery (laparoscopic cholecystectomy). Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol. It does not demonstrate broadly faster recovery or an across-the-board clinical benefit. The authors themselves are cautious and explicitly list limitations.
The article strips out that narrow context and generalises. Phrases like “music eases surgery and speeds recovery” and “strongest evidence yet” extrapolate from a sample of 56 people undergoing one procedure to “surgery” in general. The paper doesn’t measure global recovery outcomes, discharge times, or longer-term effects. Satisfaction and pain scores are even reported as comparable between groups (P=0.361 and P=0.07).
There’s also mechanistic speculation in the article (implicit memory, psychological responses, “humanising the operating room”) that isn’t in the study’s data. The paper reports dose differences and perioperative physiological measures—not neuropsychological mechanisms.
> Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol.
Ooh, that sounds like p-hacking. How many other protocols, and other potential outcomes in general, did they look at before picking the one to publish? If it's on the order of 20, then we can expect they'd encounter such a result by pure chance.
Sure.
The headlines says that music “speeds recovery” but the paper specifically says that patients had similar recovery profiles.
The media article overall overstates the findings of the study. It’s a very specific study on a specific cohort and a specific surgery (minimally invasion) but the article implies strongly that music helps with all surgery.
Also the paper specifically doesn’t touch on medial outcomes from the music - that’s fine as science since it’s granular, but it’s a pretty big thing to miss in the article.
The article misses a bunch of further questions that need more research. How does the patient playing music affect the surgeon? Is it music in general or specific music that helps? Is the patient choosing the music relevant?
“Reshape how hospitals think about surgery”? Not really, hospitals already use music in surgery so it’s not going to “reshape” anything. Over dramatisation.
It’s also just very shallow. Makes no mention of existing science/practice for example. Didn’t speak to any other researchers.
Look, the article is fine-ish but it’s just a regurgitation of the paper with more dramatisation and no analysis. Just post the paper especially on HN.
Good points - that's why I follow & support https://theconversation.com/ for news since it's Science Journalism is done by actual scientists working in the field.
> How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?
This goes both ways: how can you (as a scientist) communicate something when you don’t understand communication?
The answer to both is to let the person who understands it and the person who is good at communication collaborate.
I kind of understand where they come from: science vulgarization in pop news has been riddled with misinterpretation or lack of depth which can mislead the general public.
Can't that be communicated without calling anyone a know-nothing hack?
I’m not gonna delete it as it’s just going to make comments like yours confusing for people, but that was poor phrasing from me.
It gave the impression that this specific journalist knows nothing, which is unfair.
I was trying to be funny (always risky online) and intended to be speaking humorously about science journalism in generally. In hindsight, my phrasing doesn’t do that, and actually doesn’t communicate what I was saying very well.
I stand by my criticism of science journalism in general and my request that the article is just posted. But my wording was very rough, ultimately didn’t make the point I intended and yes might frustrate some people. If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
Oof, this comment was really nice up until the end. Accepting responsibility, expressing regret, etc.
> If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
But then you're like "If you're upset, whatever, that's on you" - even though nobody's really suggested someone is "extremely" upset or hurt by your comment.
Also, you can be funny on the Internet - it has nothing to do with that. The real question is whether you can be funny without degrading people.
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I don't understand why anyone would think that this kind of snark and condescension is furthering the discussion in any way.
A good thing for us all to keep in mind: we don't /have to/ share all our thoughts.
If we were all following the guidelines here, then this little meta discussion about journalistic interpretation would have never even happened. We'd be discussing the topic, instead of the reporting of that topic.
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
n=56 doesn't give you much information regarding the margin of error, unless you practice Tarot Reader's cat science. The standard deviation of outcomes and the difference between both outcomes matter just as much.
If I flip a coin 56 times and it always falls on head, I can be pretty much certain that it's not a fair coin. I wouldn't need to flip it 1000 times. We are all someone else's "know-nothing hack"...
also, “this is study is flawed because n=56, here’s my n=1” is hilarious
I'm going in for facial blurring surgery like that gentleman next week. I'm hopeful it will help with my social anxiety.
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