Music For All Ages: The Research on Music Medicine for Kids

Houston, we have a playlist. Learn about the role that sound played on the Artemis II mission, and how you can use it to supercharge your workdays down on Earth.

Earlier this month, the Artemis II team extended the limits of humanity, traveling further from our home planet than anyone has ever been. So far away from home, almost nothing feels familiar: Living quarters are tight, cramped, and noisy; food is dehydrated; showering is impossible; and every movement must be maneuvered to a zero-g environment. Yet, even hundreds of thousands of miles away, the coos of Chappell Roan’s “I know you wanted me to stay…” kept the crew tethered to Earth.

Like many who came before them, the Artemis II astronauts listened to music daily in order to stay motivated, comfortable, and connected to friends and family. Their space playlist is a powerful reminder of music’s ability to bring people together and help them excel individually. Here are a few lessons we’re taking away from a record-breaking mission—and the music that helped tune it.

A Song to Start the Day

This isn’t the first time that music has been sent to space. NASA has a long tradition of broadcasting songs to astronauts, often in the mornings to start their days on a high note. The first recorded instance of this was a special recording of “Hello Dolly,” made for the 1965 Gemini 6 mission. The lyrics, “While the earth's turning, the midnight oil was burning,” welcomed the two-person crew back after their 26-hour mission.

The Artemis II team started every “morning” (as much as mornings can exist without sunrise) in space with a song chosen by their crew, friends, and families. Their wake-up playlist featured a mix of newer pop tracks and familiar classics, with Tokyo Drifting and Under Pressure said to be among the team’s favorites. Their last day of the expedition fittingly started with “Run to the Water” by Live, a departure from the classic return song, “Going Back to Houston.” 

Previous space missions have also included live musical performances. “In December, 1965, Guptain Schirra and Major Stafford, using a harmonica and small bells, performed in space for the earthlings, radioing their version of ‘Jingle Bells,’” notes an article from the 1968 archives of The New York Times.

According to NASA, space psychologists have long recognized music as a tool for maintaining morale on long-haul journeys. Now, the International Space Station is rumored to have two guitars, a keyboard, and a saxophone, and crewmembers are welcome to bring their own instruments aboard as well. 

How to Bring Music into Your Daily Missions

We’re not all astronauts jetting through space at 60,000 miles an hour (thank goodness!). But music can still set us up for success each day, much like it did for the Artemis II team. It can be a particularly helpful tool during the workday, especially if you work in a job that toggles between periods of focus and creativity.

Here are a few research-backed ways music can enhance your work—whether you’re testing deep space systems or just an Excel spreadsheet.

1. It improves mood, which can prime us for productivity.

As Spiritune’s Founder and CEO Jamie Pabst writes in an article for Fortune, “Studies have shown that listening to music can improve negative moods and reduce stress. When we’re in a relaxed, positive state, our brains are primed for productivity: We’re better at attending to and focusing on the work at hand and we get more done.”

A growing body of research reinforces that listening to music helps regulate people’s emotional responses and feel less burdened by stress, even during challenging times. In turn, this shift in mood reduces one’s risk of burnout and disengagement.

“Music stands out in this context because it is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to boost mood and decrease stress, particularly while on the job,” Pabst adds. Take a page from NASA’s book and curate a morning tunes playlist that puts you in a good mood to set yourself up for a more positive workday.

2. It sparks creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

The next time you’re stuck on a problem, try taking a break to listen to a song or musical track. Research suggests it could help your brain make new and unexpected connections.

One study found that those who listened to upbeat music while performing a task tended to approach it more creatively than those who worked in silence. The study authors suspect this was due to music’s ability to shift participants’ perspectives and adopt more flexible thinking. “When getting stuck in a rut, it can be helpful to, instead of digging deeper, dig elsewhere,” they write. 

3. It enhances focus and flow.

In a workplace context, music can be a practical tool for masking distracting noise, allowing us to reach a focused “flow state” more easily. 

“There is also good evidence to support that music can improve executive function, particularly when it comes to performance on cognitive tasks that involve sustained attention, response inhibition, repetition, and flow, which is critical when we want to execute tasks efficiently and operate at our best in the workplace,” Pabst notes on Fortune. 

4. It zooms out our perspective.

Many astronauts note that their time in space gives them a new outlook on life on Earth—a phenomenon known as the “overview effect.” Looking at the planet from afar reminds them just how precious and fragile life is, and how connected we are to everyone and everything else on our Pale Blue Dot. 

While music can’t entirely recreate this feeling, it is known to evoke its own sense of awe, gratitude, and connection. If you’ve ever gotten the chills listening to a song or felt moved to tears by certain lyrics, you know how sounds prompt us to reflect on our lives and put our problems into perspective—a skill that’s valuable at work and beyond.

Getting on the Right Track

Playing certain music as you work can help you focus on the task at hand, make creative connections, and enjoy a better mood—but not all tracks are created equal.

As one randomized controlled study that Spiritune was involved in showed, instrumental music tends to be better for enhancing mood and cognition than music with distracting lyrics. A song’s tempo, groove, and complexity can also impact how it helps or harms our workdays.

Spiritune’s music therapist-designed tracks are created to be enjoyable and not distracting, making them the perfect desk companion. Research shows that they increase positive mood and decrease negativity during mentally demanding tasks, and help sharpen cognitive ability without sacrificing accuracy—all after just 10 minutes or less.

Companies from The World Bank and Crunch Fitness to McLaren IndyCar  and Galileo Health are now using our science-backed tracks to help their employees combat stress, taking a dent out of the $225 billion in lost productivity and absenteeism each year.

"Spiritune is my own personal go-to for stress relief and focus. I also refer it to all my anxiety/depression patients. I'm so glad this is a resource we can officially share with our team and patients," says Sophie Piso, a Behavioral Health Coach with Galileo.

Back Down to Earth

Since the Apollo II crew returned to our orbit on April 10, they’ve reunited with their families, readjusted to gravity, and started recovering from a grueling mission in an unfamiliar place. But music is undoubtedly one element of their time in space that they’re continuing to enjoy. 

Take a note out of their book and consider how you can more intentionally work music into your toughest workdays, using sound as a way to bring yourself back down to Earth.

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A conversation with Concetta Tomaino—Spiritune Music Therapy Advisor—for International Women in Music Day.

Concetta Tomaino has worked at the intersection of music and health for nearly fifty years. Along the way, she’s co-authored numerous studies, co-founded the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function alongside leading neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, and, perhaps most importantly, helped patients with severe illness find their voice through sound.

Spiritune is honored to call Tomaino our Music Therapy Advisor. As Founder and CEO Jamie Pabst shares, “Connie’s decades of work in music therapy have laid the scientific and clinical foundation that makes what we’re building at Spiritune possible. Having her as an advisor helps us understand what’s been built in the past so we can more thoughtfully build toward the future—and I feel incredibly lucky to have her guiding us. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to carry her legacy forward by bringing music-based care to more people, more accessibly than ever before.”

This International Women in Music Day (March 28), we’re tracing Tomaino’s time in the field—from her childhood as a trumpet player to her early research in New York nursing homes to her modern goal to bring the power of music therapy to the masses.  

How did you get started in the music therapy field?

I wanted to be a medical doctor since I was two years old. But I’ve also been involved in music my whole life. I sang in the choir at church, and in high school, I picked up the trumpet and played in the band. 

I was really a science geek, and in college, I became a pre-med student in chemistry and biology. I wanted to keep up with trumpet lessons in college, but in order to do that, I had to become a music major. So I was double-majoring in music and sciences.

By my junior year, I had a dilemma: Do I pursue music or medicine? 

It was just by accident that one day I saw an ad that said ‘Career in music therapy.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what is music therapy?’

It just so happened—again, by luck—that the band director at my college at the time was also the band director at NYU. And two years before, NYU had just started a master's program in music therapy. And so I graduated in June of 1976 and started attending my first music therapy course that July. My first internship was at a nursing home in Brooklyn, New York.

What was it like to work as a music therapist in nursing homes at that time? 

Not much was known about Alzheimer's and dementia back then. Patients were overmedicated, tube-fed, and tied to wheelchairs so they wouldn't scream and pull out their nasogastric feeding tubes. They were written off as being non-responsive and not aware of themselves. 

But when I sang a familiar song to them, they came back to life. 

They not only participated, but they also seemed less agitated. They obviously knew the words to the songs. I’m wondering: ‘How can they process sound if they supposedly have no cognition left?’ That really started my search to understand how music affects the brain, and why music is preserved in people who have severe brain injuries and damage.

What was the public perception of music therapy back then?

It was a fairly new field, and nobody really knew about it. When Dr. Sacks and I went to see neuroscientists, they would say, “‘You can't study music. There's no way, it's too complex, and there’s no scientific way to study it.’”

But he and I were seeing that music was really helping people change and improve. People who’d had strokes and couldn't speak were able to speak again. People with movement disorders were able to walk better. 

One of the reasons we started the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function was to raise funding for basic neuroscience research. We got some early grants that allowed us to look at the cause and effect of what was working and why.  

How were you able to study music’s impact on patients before modern brain imaging devices?

That was the interesting thing. In my first study with Dr. Oliver Sacks, he was still using his 8-channel paper EEG [editor’s note: This type of ‘analog EEG’ recorded spontaneous electrical activity onto paper]. PET scans and other types of functional imaging were just starting—they were so limited in what they could do. 

So, we had to look more at clinical applications in real time. We studied the effects that music had on people using other types of tools, such as psychological measurements and neuropsychological assessments. We had to learn as we went and try to find applications that made sense within the context of caring for these individuals with a variety of neurologic impairments.

Do any patient success stories stick out to you?

I worked with one woman who was being treated with medication for a pituitary tumor, I believe. Because of the medication, she had something called Tardive dyskinesia (TD)—her tongue was constantly moving in and out of her mouth. Because she couldn't speak well, the staff treated her as if she had severe cognitive impairment.

But I noticed that if I got her to sing, her TD shut off. It was an example of auditory-triggered motor activity actually canceling out involuntary movements. When she was in this state, she was able to talk and have full conversations. And she was 100% cognitively intact.

We were able to show the staff that somebody who seemed to be incapacitated was fully aware and alive and functioning. It was just because of her medication that she’d had this side effect.

What has been the most memorable or meaningful moment of your career so far?

We've been working all this time to build up an argument for supporting music-based interventions in clinical music therapy.

I think a big win for the field of music therapy happened about ten years ago when Renee Fleming got involved with the NIH [to fund and standardize music and health clinical research for brain disorders].

Having the NIH recognize that there's real promise in music and brain research and that money and research efforts should be put behind this… that was amazing.

How have your past experiences shaped the work you do at Spiritune?

Throughout my career and with the Institute, I've been really involved in engaging with scientists and trying to understand the specific elements of music that can affect our function. 

I'm very interested in auditory entrainment and how the frequency of sound or the rhythm patterns of sound affect motor function and physiological states.

I think it was my scientific background and my experience working directly with patients that led Jamie to ask me to be part of the Spiritune team. My contribution has really been, with Dr. Daniel Bowling at Stanford, looking at the sounds that seem to affect emotional responses in very specific ways.

What do you hope is next for the field of music and medicine? 

We’ve come a long way since I started in the field: Medication and surgery aren’t always the end-all healthcare treatments anymore. Physicians are more open to alternative practices and other methods of healing. This has allowed the discussion of music therapy and its benefits to expand throughout the healthcare system. You no longer have to prove that music therapy is important.

But I still see room for improvement in two areas. One: Participation in music and creative arts should be an essential right for all children. Opportunities to access music should be available from birth until death.

Two: There has been some great research to show that personalized music can help people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia overcome behavioral issues. Music therapy reduces the need for psychotropic drugs. Yet still, many nursing homes use a schizophrenia diagnosis in order to give inappropriate psychotropic medications to people with dementia. 

One of my goals is to make a case that music therapy should be the first ‘prescription’ given to somebody with dementia, before psychotropic medication. I would love to see that happen. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

When Spotify released its 2025 year-in-review report, Spotify Wrapped, one feature in particular got the internet talking: Listening Age. 

Suddenly, people of all biological ages couldn’t stop posting about their musical listening ages. There were the twenty-four-year-olds bemoaning their 62-year-old listening habits and the 40-somethings owning up to having the taste of a teenager. Thought articles couldn’t decide if the new feature was spot-on, far off, or somewhere in between—but one thing was for certain: it struck a nerve. 

What was intended as a fun marketing tool got people asking themselves: How do musical tastes shift, or stay the same, as we get older?

It turns out this question has intrigued researchers for a long time, before Spotify was even a blip. Here’s what science has revealed about how musical preferences evolve, and the ages at which they tend to be the most malleable.  

Finding the most formative music years

Back in 1989, a foundational study came out declaring that people’s penchant for popular music seems to follow a U-shaped curve. That is, their preference for the music of the moment grows until they reach the age of 24, and then starts to wane. Many interpreted this study to mean that the music we listen to in early adulthood has the strongest influence on our lifelong music habits. 

Subsequent studies have come to the same basic conclusion: What we are exposed to when we’re relatively young tends to shape our preferences for the rest of our lives—in music, but also in fashion, television, etc. However, the exact age at which musical preferences develop is still up for debate. More recently, researchers have argued that the golden age probably happens earlier in life, when we’re closer to 14 years old or 17 years old instead of twenty four. However, most agree that the decade between 15 and 25 seems to be an important one. 

Interestingly, people seem to resonate with the music they listened to when they fell in this age window and the music that their parents listened to at this age. This suggests that musical preference is, to a certain extent, passed along through generations. 

A lifelong evolution

While musical taste seems to firm up when we’re in our teens and 20s, it doesn’t completely solidify. Changes can still happen throughout our lives, for many reasons. 

To investigate how, one study aptly titled Music through the ages tracked over 250,000 people to see how their musical attitudes and preferences evolved from adolescence through middle age. Researchers found that as people got older, they tended to start liking some genres of music more and others less, and these shifts were largely shaped by personality. For example, having a more ‘open’ personality was associated with an increasing preference for classical and jazz music in middle adulthood. 

Others posit that our taste for certain music evolves naturally once we have more years under our belt. Some genres, like classical and jazz, tend to be more complex, and so enjoying them might take more musical knowledge and listening experience, which can come with age. The memories we form around certain songs or genres of music also likely shape how we perceive those songs over the years. 

Maybe you’re born with it

While your response to music is partially the result of age and lived experience, there also seems to be a genetic component at play. Based on research on twins, the ability to elicit pleasure from music is partially heritable. Musical talent is also thought to be genetically determined, at least in part. 

The latest research on this topic finds that, in general, people tend to have a more “omnivorous” musical diet and enjoy hearing different genres and styles when they’re young. After analyzing over two billion listening sessions on Last.fm from 2005-2020, researchers found that young people listened to a wider variety of songs, favoring new releases but also exploring older music. This listening pattern persisted until the age of 40 or so, when people’s preferences tended to become more focused, narrowing in on the music they liked when they were young. “Beyond 40, current music consumption declines, and nostalgia-driven listening dominates,” researchers write. 

Your musical companion through the ages

Spiritune is designed to appeal to every type of music lover—no matter if you’re a disco-crazy 60’s baby or a millennial with a penchant for pop-punk. Instead of focusing on a particular style, it’s built with the intention of “making music accessible for everyone,” says Daniel Bowling, Ph.D., Spiritune’s Scientific Co-founder. 

Spiritune music tracks use principles of music therapy and neuroscience to lead listeners through noticeable changes in mood and energy in just a few minutes. Composed with genre-agnostic instruments and beats, they’re made to be therapeutic for everyone—no matter their listening age.

Like what you're reading? Sign up for Spiritune’s newsletter to get a monthly music therapy download straight to your inbox. Haven’t tried Spiritune yet? Download it today with a free trial!