Music, the Brain, and End-of-Life Care

A recent study published in PLOS ONE explores how music influences the way the brain processes, learns, and remembers information. The researchers found that listening to music – especially music that is familiar and predictable – can significantly affect attention, memory encoding, and cognitive sequencing. In contrast, unfamiliar or irregular music required greater mental effort and altered how information was processed. These findings highlight that music is not simply a background experience. Rather, it is an active stimulus that shapes how the brain functions.

While the study focuses on cognitive mechanisms rather than clinical care, it adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating music’s powerful impact on the human brain. Music engages multiple neural systems simultaneously, influencing emotion, memory, attention, and perception. This helps explain why music can be grounding, comforting, and emotionally meaningful – particularly during times of stress, illness, or transition.

Implications for Hospice Clinical Teams

For hospice clinical teams, this research reinforces what is often observed at the bedside: music can play a meaningful therapeutic role at the end of life. Music therapy in hospice is not about performance or entertainment; it is about comfort, emotional expression, symptom management, and connection. Familiar music may help reduce anxiety, support orientation, evoke memories, and create moments of calm or shared meaning for patients and families. Understanding how music affects the brain can help clinicians appreciate why patients may respond so strongly to certain songs or musical styles.

This research also invites reflection on how music is incorporated into interdisciplinary hospice care. Thoughtful use of music – whether through formal music therapy services or mindful integration into patient routines – can support holistic, person-centered care. As hospice teams continue to focus on quality of life, music offers a non-pharmacologic, deeply human tool that aligns with the goals of comfort, dignity, and presence.

Questions for the Hospice Clinical Team to Consider

As hospice care continues to emphasize whole-person, interdisciplinary, and evidence-informed practice, this research invites clinicians to pause and reflect on how music is experienced and used within patient care. Music often emerges naturally in hospice settings – through personal playlists, family memories, cultural traditions, or the work of music therapists.

Thoughtfully considering these moments can help teams better understand how music supports comfort, emotional expression, cognitive engagement, and connection at the end of life. The following questions are offered to encourage reflection, discussion, and collaboration across disciplines. The goal is to enhance patient- and family-centered care.

• How do we currently assess a patient’s relationship with music and musical preferences?
• In what ways might familiar music support comfort, emotional expression, or symptom relief for our patients?
• How can interdisciplinary teams collaborate more intentionally with music therapists?
• Are there opportunities to better educate families about the therapeutic role of music at the end of life?

Additional Reading Material

• The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease
• Perceptions of family members of palliative medicine and hospice patients who experienced music therapy
• Music therapy in adult hospices: a national multicentre survey
• Effectiveness of music therapy, aromatherapy, and massage therapy on patients in palliative care with end-of-life needs: A systematic review
• A randomised controlled pilot and feasibility study of music therapy for improving the quality of life of hospice inpatients