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Summary Music is often used as a self‐help tool to alleviate insomnia. To evaluate the effect of bedtime music listening as a strategy for improving insomnia, we conducted an assessor‐blinded randomized controlled trial. Fifty‐seven persons with insomnia disorder were included and randomized to music intervention (n = 19), audiobook control (n = 19) or a waitlist control group (n = 19). The primary outcome measure was the Insomnia Severity Index. In addition, we used polysomnography and actigraphy to evaluate objective measures of sleep, and assessed sleep quality and quality of life. The results showed no clear effect of music on insomnia symptoms as the group × time interaction only approached significance (effect size = 0.71, p = .06), though there was a significant improvement in insomnia severity within the music group. With regard to the secondary outcomes, we found a significant effect of the music intervention on perceived sleep improvement and quality of life, but no changes in the objective measures of sleep. In conclusion, music listening at bedtime appears to have a positive impact on sleep perception and quality of life, but no clear effect on insomnia severity. Music is safe and easy to administer, but further research is needed to assess the effect of music on different insomnia subtypes, and as an adjunctive or preventive intervention.

These results support the use of relaxation music listening at bedtime to improve sleep quality in traumatized refugees.

Music may be a tool in reducing anxiety, pain, and improving mood among patients with cancer in active treatment. However, methodological limitations in the studies conducted so far prevent firm conclusions.

Insomnia Disorder is the most prevalent sleep disorder, and it involves both sleep difficulties and daytime complaints. The neural underpinnings of Insomnia Disorder are poorly understood. Several existing neuroimaging studies focused on local measures and specific regions of interests, which makes it difficult to judge their whole‐brain significance. We therefore here applied a data‐driven approach to assess differences in whole‐brain structural connectivity between adults with Insomnia Disorder and matched controls without sleep complaints. We used diffusion tensor imaging and probabilistic tractography to assess whole‐brain structural connectivity, and examined group differences using network‐based statistics. The results revealed a significant difference in the structural connectivity of the two groups (p = .014). Participants with Insomnia Disorder showed reduced connectivity in a sub‐network that included mainly fronto‐subcortical connections with the insula as a key region. By taking a whole‐brain network perspective, our study enables the integration of previous inconsistent findings. Our results reveal that reduced structural connectivity of the left insula and the connections between frontal and subcortical regions are central neurobiological features of Insomnia Disorder. The importance of these areas for interoception, emotional processing, stress responses and the generation of slow‐wave sleep may help guide the development of neurobiology‐based models of the prevalent condition of Insomnia Disorder.

Sleep problems are increasing in modern society. Throughout history, lullabies have been used to soothe the sleep of children, and today, with the increasing accessibility of recorded music, many people report listening to music as a tool to improve sleep. Nevertheless, we know very little about this common human habit. In this study, we elucidate the characteristics of music used for sleep by extracting the features of a large number of tracks (N = 225,927) from 989 sleep playlists retrieved from the global streaming platform Spotify. We found that compared to music in general, music used for sleep is softer and slower; it is more often instrumental (i.e. without lyrics) and played on acoustic instruments. Yet, a large amount of variation was found to be present in sleep music, which clustered into six distinct subgroups. Strikingly, three of these subgroups included popular mainstream tracks that are faster, louder, and more energetic than average sleep music. The findings reveal previously unknown aspects of sleep music and highlight the individual variation in the choice of music for facilitating sleep. By using digital traces, we were able to determine the universal and subgroup characteristics of sleep music in a unique, global dataset. This study can inform the clinical use of music and advance our understanding of how music is used to regulate human behaviour in everyday life.

Insomnia Disorder is the most prevalent sleep disorder and it involves both sleep difficulties and daytime complaints. The neural underpinnings of Insomnia Disorder are poorly understood.Existing neuroimaging studies are limited by their focus on local measures and specific regions of interests. To address this shortcoming, we applied a data-driven approach to assess differences in whole-brain structural connectivity between adults with Insomnia Disorder and matched controls without sleep complaints. We used diffusion tensor imaging and probabilistic tractography to assess whole-brain structural connectivity and examined group differences using Network-Based Statistics. The results revealed a significant difference in the structural connectivity of the two groups. Participants with Insomnia Disorder showed reduced connectivity in a subnetwork that was largely left lateralized, including mainly fronto-subcortical connections with the insula as a key region. By taking a whole-brain network perspective, our study succeeds at integrating previous inconsistent findings, and our results reveal that reduced structural connectivity of the left insula and the connections between frontal and subcortical regions are central neurobiological features of Insomnia Disorder. The importance of these areas for interoception, emotional processing, stress responses and the generation of slow wave sleep may help guide the development of neurobiologybased models of the highly prevalent condition of Insomnia Disorder.

No abstract