[How does music affect the human body?].

Music therapy has developed its practice and research approaches within a qualitative framework more related to humanistic traditions than to medical science. Music medicine has therefore developed as a separate discipline, endeavouring to incorporate the legitimate therapeutic use of music within a medical framework. This paper argues that more extensive communication and collaboration between the methods developed within the music therapy community, and research based on medical science, could lead to a better understanding of the place of music as a therapeutic tool, both as regards its efficacy and its limits. Research has shown that music may influence central physiological variables like blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, EEG measurements, body temperature and galvanic skin response. Music influences immune and endocrine function. The existing research literature shows growing knowledge of how music can ameliorate pain, anxiety, nausea, fatigue and depression. There is less research done on how music, and what type of music, is utilized and administered specifically for optimum effect in specific clinical situations.