Music: Can it tune up your health?

It can soothe, trigger memories, temper pain, aid sleep & make the heart beat faster or slower. It, of course, is music. The litany of suspected benefits is long: It can soothe infants and adults alike, trigger memories, temper pain, aid sleep and make the heart beat faster or slower. "It," of course, is music. A growing body of research has been making such suggestions for years. Just why music seems to have these effects, though, remains elusive. There's a lot to learn, said Robert Zatorre, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, where he studies the topic at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Music has been shown to help with such things as pain and memory, he said, but "we don't know for sure that it does improve our [overall] health." And though there are some indications that music can affect both the body and the mind, "whether it translates to health benefits is still being studied," Zatorre said.