The team of Professor Zhang Zhi from the University of science and technology of China, in cooperation with a number of scientific research teams at home and abroad, proved through experiments that the sound about 5 dB higher than the ambient sound can effectively alleviate the pain of mice, and further revealed the scientific mechanism that low-intensity sound can inhibit the activity of the brain "pain area", and then alleviate the pain. The internationally renowned academic journal Science recently published this achievement. As early as 1960, researchers found that playing music during dental surgery can regulate patients' mood, and pointed out that even the noise of the electric drill can produce analgesic effect. But for more than half a century, the scientific mechanism of the phenomenon that "sound can reduce pain" is still unclear. Recently, the team of Professor Zhi Zhang of the University of science and technology of China, the team of Professor Yuanyuan Liu of the National Institutes of health of the United States and the team of associate professor Wenjuan Tao of Anhui Medical University cooperated to carry out research and made new discoveries. They played three different types of sounds to mice with paw inflammation: soothing music, discordant sounds and white noise. The results showed that these three kinds of sounds could effectively alleviate the pain of mice when playing at low intensity, but the effect was not obvious after turning up the volume. "Our experiment found that when the sound intensity is about 5 dB higher than the ambient sound, the analgesic effect is the most obvious. When the sound intensity is 10 dB, the effect is weakened. If you increase the sound, the effect basically disappears." Said zhouwenjie, the first author of the paper and a special associate researcher at the University of science and technology of China. Researchers used the virus as a nerve tracer to track the output of the mouse auditory cortex. They found that a large number of neurons in the auditory cortex project to the somatosensory thalamus, and low-intensity sound can inhibit this projection. "In short, low-intensity sound further inhibits the activity of the brain area responsible for 'producing pain' by inhibiting the projection of neurons in the auditory cortex, reducing the pain of mice." Zhou Wenjie said that this is true in mice, but the mechanism of human brain is much more complex, and the pain relief effect of sound on human beings deserves further study. (outlook new era)