Sound—including music and noise—can relieve pain in humans, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unknown. Scientists have identified the neural mechanisms through which sound blunts pain in mice. The findings could inform development of safer methods to treat pain. They discovered that analgesic effects of sound depended on a low (5-decibel) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) relative to ambient noise in mice. Viral tracing, microendoscopic calcium imaging, and multitetrode recordings in freely moving mice showed that low-SNR sounds inhibited glutamatergic inputs from the auditory cortex (ACx^Glu) to the thalamic posterior (PO) and ventral posterior (VP) nuclei. Optogenetic or chemogenetic inhibition of the ACx^Glu→PO and ACx^Glu→VP circuits mimicked the low-SNR sound–induced analgesia in inflamed hindpaws and forepaws, respectively. Artificial activation of these two circuits abolished the sound-induced analgesia. a new study revealed the corticothalamic circuits underlying sound-promoted analgesia by deciphering the role of the auditory system in pain processing.

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