Music exposure reduces anxiety- and depression-like behavior in rodents: a systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis

Abstract

Anxiety and depressive disorders impose a major global burden, prompting interest in non-pharmacological interventions that may influence affective processes. Music exposure has often been reported to affect anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, but preclinical findings remain heterogeneous and have not been quantitatively synthesized. Prior work has also focused almost entirely on mean behavioral responses, largely overlooking inter-individual variability as a biologically meaningful dimension. We conducted a preregistered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis of experimental studies testing music exposure in laboratory rodents. Following PRISMA and PRISMA-EcoEvo guidelines, we synthesized 298 effect sizes from 20 studies using multilevel models to account for non-independence among effect sizes. We quantified effects on mean behavior with the log response ratio (lnRR) and effects on variability with the log variability ratio (ln V R). Overall, music exposure was associated with a statistically significant reduction in anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, corresponding to an average decrease of about 18% relative to controls. This mean effect was detected across outcome types and life stages despite substantial heterogeneity. By contrast, music exposure did not produce a statistically significant overall change in inter-individual behavioral variability. Instead, variability responses were context dependent: behavioral assay type and music meta-genre significantly moderated ln V R, with anxiety-like assays tending to show increased variability and depression-like assays tending to show reduced variability under music exposure. These results suggest that music exposure reliably shifts average affect-related behavior without uniformly changing behavioral stability across individuals. Because the evidence comes mainly from short-term exposures in young adult laboratory rodents, generalization beyond similar contexts should remain cautious.