Severe Lithium Toxicity Following Concurrent Lithium and Nabumetone Use in a Patient With Bipolar I Disorder: A Case Report.

Stress is a natural response of the body that helps it adapt to new situations and survive in the face of danger. When well regulated and followed by proper recovery, it can offer potential benefits, such as allowing the body to respond quickly to challenges and threats, and improving focus and performance (). However, chronic or poorly managed stress can have detrimental effects on the body, including negative impacts on mental and physical health, eating habits, and an increased risk of disease development (). Given the harmful effects of stress on the body, it is important to investigate the factors that influence how the body responds to stress. One such factor is music, which has gained increasing attention in recent years for its effects on stress management and the promotion of positive emotions (; ; ; ). Music can be listened to at different stages of a stressful experience, including before, during, or after exposure to a stressor. These stages correspond to its potential prevention, regulation, and recovery effects on stress, respectively. In the present work, we focus on the preventive stage, strategies implemented before exposure to a stressor to reduce its impact. We use the term for such pre-stressor interventions and examine self-selected music listening as one potential way to prepare for an upcoming stressful event. Music listened to before a stressor may support stress preparation via several psychophysiological mechanisms. First, self-selected music can act as an attentional anchor that reduces anticipatory worries by drawing focus toward the music (; ). Second, music is widely used for mood and emotion regulation; it can increase positive affect and calmness, which has been linked to lower perceived stress in daily life (; ; ). Third, music may modulate autonomic activity via physiological entrainment, altering heart rate variability and other stress-related indices in ways consistent with enhanced parasympathetic and reduced sympathetic activation (; ; ; ). Finally, by stabilizing attention and mood, music may help preserve cognitive resources and facilitate flexible prefrontal autonomic regulation; within the neurovisceral integration framework, this may buffer physiological reactions to subsequent stress (). These mechanisms underpin our expectation that the music group would show different and potentially more adaptive psychophysiological responses than the control group during the stress task.