Speaker
Description
This paper explores the therapeutic potential of Spatial Audio and Immersive Audio in the context of mental health interventions. While a broad evidence base shows that audio-based approaches, including music listening, music therapy, and other sound-based interventions, can reduce pain, anxiety, stress, depressive symptoms, and fatigue, the additional contribution of spatial reproduction remains unclear. Using an integrative narrative approach, this review synthesizes evidence from media psychology, psychoacoustics, and clinical research on the relation between therapeutic mechanisms and the perceptual and physiological effects of Spatial Audio. Across audio-only, audiovisual, and interactive VR settings, spatial reproduction can improve localization and externalization, strengthen presence, immersion, attention, imagery, and emotional engagement, and elicit measurable physiological responses. Most findings are mechanism-oriented, and few clinical studies directly evaluate the effects of Spatial Audio on therapeutic outcomes. The available evidence indicates that Spatial Audio can intensify exposure-related activation, while immersive applications incorporating spatial sound can reduce tension, anxiety, and negative mood. Spatial Audio is therefore understood as a technological contributor to Immersive Audio and a modulator of therapeutic mechanisms rather than a stand-alone treatment. Its value depends on reproduction technology, sound design, content, audiovisual context, and the intervention goal. Future research should compare equivalent interventions and combine psychoacoustic, behavioral, physiological, and clinical outcome measures.