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Updated: Jan 23, 2026

Assessing the Effects of Music Listening on Psychobiological Stress in Daily Life
Published on: February 2, 2017
Effects of Relaxing Music on Healthy Sleep
Maren Jasmin Cordi1,2, Sandra Ackermann1, Björn Rasch3,4
1University of Fribourg, Department of Psychology, Division of Cognitive Biopsychology and Methods, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Sleep is vital for human health and wellbeing, and sleep disturbances are comorbid to many mental and physiological disorders. Music consistently improves subjective sleep quality, whereas results for objective sleep parameters diverge. These inconsistencies might be due to inter-individual differences. Here, 27 female subjects listened to either music or a control text before a 90 minutes nap in a within-subjects design. We show that music improved subjective sleep quality as compared to the text condition. In all participants, music resulted in a reduced amount of sleep stage N1 during the nap. In addition, music significantly increased the amount of slow-wave sleep (SWS) and increased the low/high frequency power ratio. However, these effects occurred only in participants with a low suggestibility index. We conclude that listening to music before a nap can improve subjective and objective sleep parameters in some participants.
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