Comparable physiological stress responses following music listening and quiet reading: An exploratory pilot study.

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

(the percentage and count of consecutive beats differing by more than 50ms, respectively). These findings suggest that both self-selected music and quiet reading before a stressor may support adaptive stress responding, but with partly distinct autonomic patterns, rather than a clear overall advantage of one activity. Given the small sample size, the results should be considered preliminary and point to the need for further research on how self-selected music can be used to prevent or lessen stress responses.