Over the past month, VALORANT’s maps have been filled with rhythmic, pulsing noises from their latest smoker-support agent, the musically-inclined Miks.
"Let's make some noise!"
While his gameplay focuses more on denying enemies’ access to key locations, one particularly intriguing ability from his moveset of six stands out: a heal—a rejuvenatingly green soundwave unique from his vibrant orange and purple palette.
Make no mistake, this concept is not entirely the most original, as characters who use music to restore injuries have been a gimmick in a lot of other games.
However, what sets him apart is that he is one of the few people from this trope whose healing does not seem to fully depend on some supernatural force, but rather comes from a sound-emitting device thrown onto the battlefield.
Though VALORANT still thrives on futuristic and cutting-edge technology superior to ours, this still begs the question: Could something similar to that of Miks’ heal exist in real life? Can music be harnessed to speed up the recovery process? Can sound really heal wounds?
Understanding Sound
To understand whether something like Miks’ healing ability could exist, it is important to first look at what sound really is.
Sound is more than something you can hear, it is a type of energy formed by pressure disturbances that travel through matter as a longitudinal wave, a type of wave that goes back and forth, which in most cases tend to look like a spring when visualized.
Within this spring-like wave, there are sections where it goes on a loop, and the amount of times this looping happens in a second is called frequency, measured in Hz. Humans perceive this frequency as pitch, where higher pitch usually means faster loops.
However, when this frequency gets too high, it could get to a point where it is no longer audible to humans. Sounds like these are called ultrasonic or ultrasound. On the other hand, extremely low frequencies are called infrasonic or infrasound.
At its core, it is simply a bunch of vibrations in the air, which makes Miks’ ability less about simply using music to regenerate health, but more about using specialized vibrations which could, in theory, interact with the body at a cellular level.
How our Cells can “Feel” Sound
This interaction is otherwise known as mechanotransduction, or the body’s way of converting outside mechanical forces into a stimulus for the body to act.
Sound, or the vibrations that come with it, can stimulate certain cells to either move faster to the site of injury or produce more materials for the creation of healthy tissue. These cells include fibroblasts that create collagen to repair damaged skin, and osteoblasts that facilitate in repairing broken bones.
Aside from directly motivating the cells to do their job, sound can also cause pressure, activating mechanosensitive ion channels on the body like PIEZO1, pathways for materials such as the Calcium ion (Ca2+) to go inside the cell.
This calcium then signals the cell to rapidly create more cells in a process called proliferation and assign the newly created cells roles in restoring the injury via differentiation.
Outside the cells, vibrations can also alter the structure of protein networks like the Extracellular Matrix (ECM), making it more elastic and easier for cells to create just enough materials to heal the wound, reducing the chances of scarring, or in worse cases, fibrosis.
Importantly, the type of benefit that is given by a sound is dependent on its frequency—different frequencies cause different vibrations, and some processes in cells can only be stimulated with specific frequencies.
For instance, lower infrasound frequencies at 1-20Hz could help more in the formation of bone and bone marrow, while higher-frequency audible sounds ranging from 100Hz - 30kHz were proven to help skin cells move faster to the site of injury and create skin barriers faster.
Sound in Medicine
This mechanism is not just theoretical either, as sound-based mechanotransduction, particularly at ultrasound frequencies higher than 20KHz, has already moved beyond the laboratory and into clinical practice.
One well-established application is Low-intensity Pulse Ultrasound (LIPUS), a treatment that uses a device generating sound waves generally at 0.5MHz to 3.0MHz to promote osteogenesis, forming cells that are necessary to replace broken bones.
Its wide range of frequencies allows it to effectively target both shallow tissue like teeth or cartilage, and deeper structures of the body like the hip bone or the leg bones.
This versatility and low cost makes LIPUS a non-invasive alternative to the usual tissue regenerating surgery, replacing the usual surgical complications with mild skin irritation or muscle cramps.
Aside from bones or skin, ultrasound can also heal the mind.
By activating ion channels like PIEZO1 or TRP-4, and injecting microbubbles to the blood-brain barrier, direct, concentrated, ultrasound can help open a reversible pathway for therapeutic agents to enter the brain, offering potential treatment for those with neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
The Future of Sound Healing
Recently, the capabilities of sound could extend even further, as ultrasound has been suggested to have the ability to actively construct new tissue.
New research explored ultrasound-based 3D bioprinting, a technique using sound waves to position and solidify specifically-modified biological “inks” onto an organ inside the body.
As sound is a longitudinal wave, it could effectively travel through solids and soft tissue, making it the perfect medium for generating enough heat to solidify this “ink” without the need for invasive surgery.
This procedure presents a major upgrade compared to the older 3D bioprinting techniques, which used a form of light radiation. Light, an electromagnetic wave, struggles to travel through solids, which makes it less effective in deeper areas of the body.
Though this procedure is far from being regularly used in a hospital room, current progress has already demonstrated ultrasound as a reliable medium of printing tissue onto small animals like rats or rabbits.
If further developed, this technology has the potential to directly repair or even fully replace damaged tissues in the body with only sound, eliminating the need for any incisions.
Miks’ healing ability may not be as far-fetched as it first appears; sound can in fact aid in healing. However, that doesn’t mean we can simply throw speakers onto injured people and expect rapid recovery.
Though science has shown that sound can influence biological processes that could accelerate the creation of new cells, the repairing of damaged tissue, or the formation of entirely new biological structures, these mechanisms still require controlled environments, precise frequencies, specialized equipment, and most importantly, a lot of time.
While humanity is still far away from having near-instant healing through music alone, the growing field of sound-based medicine suggests the line between reality and VALORANT might be thinner than expected.
Miks’ rhythmic pulses still remain a game mechanic, but in the future, they might echo something real—for now though, if you are in a battlefield and you have music in your arsenal, the best you can do with it is to calm your mind before attempting that 1v5.
Written by Nathaniel Kyle Sto. Domingo, Insight PH
Nathaniel Kyle Sto. Domingo, Insight PH is a dedicated campus journalist and contributor. Their insightful writing sparks meaningful conversations and keeps the community informed.
