Music has long been known to move us emotionally, but new research shows it may also help regulate our bodies.
A study presented at the ESC Congress 2025 has found that blood pressure synchronizes most strongly with predictable phrase structures in music.
The finding suggests that music therapies tailored to blood pressure regulation could one day become a valuable tool for people with hypertension.
The study was led by Professor Elaine Chew, a pianist and Professor of Engineering at King’s College London. She explained that music, much like language, is built on patterns and phrases.
“These expressive structures often strike a chord with listeners,” she said. “Our research shows that more predictable music phrase structures have a greater impact on the cardiovascular system.”
The study builds on earlier work showing that breathing and heart rate are also influenced by musical phrases.
Predictable phrases—those that follow regular patterns and last about as long as slow breathing cycles—create stronger synchronization. Longer tracks, which contain more phrases, also had a stronger effect.
To test the connection, researchers continuously monitored the blood pressure of 92 participants, including 60 women and 32 men with an average age of 42.
They listened to nine piano pieces selected from a set of 30, which were original recordings by renowned pianists.
The team systematically altered the expressiveness of these performances to study how changes in tempo, loudness, and phrasing influenced cardiovascular responses.
For consistency, the music was played back on a reproducing piano, recreating the experience of a live performance in a controlled setting.
The researchers found that in 25 out of 30 tracks, blood pressure synchronized more with loudness than with tempo.
But it was the predictability of the musical phrases that had the greatest effect, allowing listeners to anticipate changes in the music.
This anticipation led to stronger synchronization between the music and blood pressure, which may improve the body’s ability to regulate cardiovascular function.
One piece stood out in particular: English pianist Harold Bauer’s performance of Franz Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Serenade. It had the most predictable phrase structures and the biggest impact on blood pressure synchronization.
The researchers believe these effects may reflect a broader human tendency to move and act in rhythm together—like rowers synchronizing strokes or dancers keeping time to music. Anticipating the beginnings and ends of rhythmic cycles not only helps coordination but also influences physiological rhythms. Music, Chew noted, taps into the brain’s reward system, the same one activated by food, sex, and drugs, which may explain why synchronizing with music feels so good.
The team used advanced methods to measure “entrainment,” or synchronization between music and physiology, confirming that the observed effects were not random. Their results suggest that music could serve as a non-drug therapy to help regulate cardiovascular health.
As Chew concluded, “This raises the exciting possibility of designing music therapies to elicit specific biological responses. One day, music might help prevent or even slow the progression of heart disease.”
