Studying music and technology to reduce stress, alcohol relapse

PULLMAN — People with alcohol use disorder, commonly known as alcoholism, have a high rate of relapse. Stressful situations are often the cause. Washington State University researchers are studying a new intervention that uses wearable technology to sense a person’s increased stress levels and play a personalized music playlist to help derail that stress. Prior work by scientists on this project showed that wearable wristbands that monitor physiological responses can accurately predict stressful situations. Thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Sound Health initiative, scientists at WSU, Arizona State University, and the University of Southern California plan to confirm those findings at a much larger scale, then start developing the new playlist-style intervention.