Sound, Mitochondria, and the Body’s Listening Field
We just read the recent review by Daniela Valenti and Anna Atlante with the kind of attention we give to things that feel like confirmations of a practice rather than mere curiosities. The paper, Sound Matrix Shaping of Living Matter: From Macrosystems to Cell Microenvironment, Where Mitochondria Act as Energy Portals in Detecting and Processing Sound Vibrations, is published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2024) and lays out a sweeping, multilevel argument for sound as an informational field that shapes living systems from the scale of ecosystems down to the cell.
Valenti and Atlante map evidence across disciplines. They draw lines from historical reports of music and health through recent in vitro work showing that different sound stimuli and musical styles modulate cellular function and mitochondrial activity. The core claim that we find most arresting is their framing of mitochondria not only as energy factories but as sensitive transducers: energy portals that detect and process vibrational information and then translate that information into biochemical and bioenergetic responses inside the cell. This is not metaphor alone; the review brings together experimental findings that point to changes in mitochondrial membrane potential, reactive oxygen species signaling, and metabolic fluxes when cells are exposed to mechanical and acoustic perturbations.
For those of us working with tone in an embodied, somatic way, the molecular picture Valenti and Atlante assemble matters because it suggests a plausible mechanistic bridge between the experience of resonance in the body and measurable biological change. When we offer a sustained tone, we are not simply producing a pleasant field. We are providing a patterned energetic input that, at certain amplitudes and frequencies, can couple to mechanical and electrochemical systems at the cell membrane and within organelles. The review synthesizes work indicating that mitochondria, because of their coupled electrochemical gradients and mechanoresponsive structures, are well placed to sense rhythmic perturbations and to convert those perturbations into downstream signaling.
We also appreciate how the review resists overclaiming. Much of the experimental evidence Valenti and Atlante discuss is preliminary: many studies are in vitro, conditions vary widely between labs, and the mapping from a petri-dish response to whole-organism outcomes remains an open empirical challenge. The authors themselves call for rigorous, standardized experiments that can parse which features of sound (frequency, amplitude, timbre, temporal structure) are most relevant to cellular responses and under what biological contexts those responses become meaningful for health. That caution aligns with how we practice: curiosity held alongside restraint, invitations rather than promises.
Practically, this review invites us to refine how we think about designing sessions and protocols. If mitochondria are indeed responsive to patterned vibrational input, then frequency selection, temporal organization, and sustained exposure become variables worth tending, not only for subjective experience but for potential bioenergetic effects. It also suggests a language for talking to clinicians and researchers so that conversations about sound therapy can move toward testable hypotheses and reproducible methods.
We are one year into working with Third Tone and we bring both humility and curiosity to what this review outlines. We remain committed to making offerings that honor the interior, felt dimensions of sound while also staying attentive to the science that can help translate those experiences into reliable, replicable benefit. For anyone in our community who wants to experiment, we invite a gentle, disciplined approach: choose a tone and a short daily practice window, keep notes about sleep, mood, breath and attention, and treat this as a small longitudinal study of one’s own field.
Valenti and Atlante’s review does something important for the field: it frames sound as a matrix that can reach into the cell, and it names mitochondria as plausible hubs for transducing that information into biology. It does not close the door on mystery. It opens one more, and it asks that we walk through carefully, listening as we go.
Full citation: Valenti D, Atlante A. Sound Matrix Shaping of Living Matter: From Macrosystems to Cell Microenvironment, Where Mitochondria Act as Energy Portals in Detecting and Processing Sound Vibrations. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2024;25:6841. doi:10.3390/ijms25136841.
