Effects of music and imagery on physiologic and self-report of analogued labor pain

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine the effects of music on analogued labor pain using volunteer nulliparous subjects who were randomly assigned to treatment groups (n = 10 per group). Assessments of the treatments were made in a 1-hour session involving twenty 80-second exposures to a laboratory pain stimulus patterned to resemble labor contractions. In the first experiment, it was hypothesized that subjects listening to easy-listening music would report lower pain ratings and cardiovascular responses than subjects listening to rock music, self-selected music, or a dissertation (placebo-attention) and subjects in a no-treatment control group. No significant group effects were found; significant time effects were found for heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Subjects spontaneously reported using imagery as a pain reduction technique. In the second study a combination of music and imagery was examined by randomly assigning subjects to one of five groups: self-generated imagery with music (SIM), guided imagery with music (GIM), self-generated imagery without music (SI), guided imagery without music (GI), or no-treatment control. Again, no significant group effects were obtained. Significant time effects were obtained for heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure.