Listening to Music during Warming-Up Counteracts the Negative Effects of Ramadan Observance on Short-Term Maximal Performance

Aim

The aim of the present study was to examine whether listening to music during warming-up might influence short-term maximal performance (STMP), cognitive anxiety, self-confidence, and enjoyment during Ramadan, and whether these affects might predict STMP.

Methods

Nine male physical education students (age: 21 ± 1.1 years; height: 1.8 ± 0.04 m; body mass: 83 ± 5 kg) volunteered to participate in the present study. A within-subjects design consisted of four experimental sessions: Two sessions occurred one week before Ramadan and two others took place during Ramadan. They were scheduled at 5 p.m. and were conducted as follows: After a 10-minute warm-up either with or without listening to music, each participant performed a 5-m multiple shuttle run test, after which he was asked to answer items intended to assess his affective state during the experimental task.

Results

Our findings revealed that STMP was lower during Ramadan than before Ramadan in the no-music condition. Additionally, it was found that STMP was higher in the music condition than in the no-music condition during Ramadan, and that STMP measured before Ramadan did not differ from that measured during Ramadan in the music condition. Regarding affects, the findings revealed that enjoyment was lower during Ramadan than before Ramadan in the music condition, and that cognitive anxiety was lower in the music condition than in the no-music condition before Ramadan. Self-confidence was not influenced by the experimental conditions.

Conclusion

This study showed that listening to music during warming-up not only would be beneficial for STMP in Ramadan fasters, but also would counteract the negative effects of Ramadan observance on STMP.     

Dynamics of P300 component of acoustic evoked potential in postraumatic unconsciousness

In order to reveal features of the brain reactions to external stimuli in the course of consciousness recovery after a severe craniocerebral injury, component P300 of acoustic evoked potential was analyzed in 9 patients with chronic and 32 patients with reversible unconsciousness. In patients with chronic unconsciousness, P300 parameters displayed a linear correlation with the current functional state. However, this component remained significantly different from its normal shape and varied only in a narrow range. In patients with reversible unconsciousness, time course of changes in amplitude and latency between recovery stages was of linear character with a tendency to normalization. The findings suggest that, in reversible unconsciousness states, processing of sensory information at different recovery stages may be performed with various functional systems that determine varying quality of processing, whereas changes in chronic unconsciousness are caused by a decrease in the number of active elements within the same functional system.     

The Rewarding Aspects of Music Listening Are Related to Degree of Emotional Arousal

Background

Listening to music is amongst the most rewarding experiences for humans. Music has no functional resemblance to other rewarding stimuli, and has no demonstrated biological value, yet individuals continue listening to music for pleasure. It has been suggested that the pleasurable aspects of music listening are related to a change in emotional arousal, although this link has not been directly investigated. In this study, using methods of high temporal sensitivity we investigated whether there is a systematic relationship between dynamic increases in pleasure states and physiological indicators of emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity, body temperature, and blood volume pulse.

Methodology

Twenty-six participants listened to self-selected intensely pleasurable music and “neutral” music that was individually selected for them based on low pleasure ratings they provided on other participants'' music. The “chills” phenomenon was used to index intensely pleasurable responses to music. During music listening, continuous real-time recordings of subjective pleasure states and simultaneous recordings of sympathetic nervous system activity, an objective measure of emotional arousal, were obtained.

Principal Findings

Results revealed a strong positive correlation between ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal. Importantly, a dissociation was revealed as individuals who did not experience pleasure also showed no significant increases in emotional arousal.

Conclusions/Significance

These results have broader implications by demonstrating that strongly felt emotions could be rewarding in themselves in the absence of a physically tangible reward or a specific functional goal.     

Music and emotions in the brain: familiarity matters

The importance of music in our daily life has given rise to an increased number of studies addressing the brain regions involved in its appreciation. Some of these studies controlled only for the familiarity of the stimuli, while others relied on pleasantness ratings, and others still on musical preferences. With a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we wished to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. First, we conducted a listening test, in which participants rated the familiarity and liking of song excerpts from the pop/rock repertoire, allowing us to select a personalized set of stimuli per subject. Then, we used a passive listening paradigm in fMRI to study music appreciation in a naturalistic condition with increased ecological value. Brain activation data revealed that broad emotion-related limbic and paralimbic regions as well as the reward circuitry were significantly more active for familiar relative to unfamiliar music. Smaller regions in the cingulate cortex and frontal lobe, including the motor cortex and Broca's area, were found to be more active in response to liked music when compared to disliked one. Hence, familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music, as revealed by fMRI data.     

Dynamic properties of segmental characteristics of EEG alpha activity in rest conditions and during cognitive tasks

Segmental structure of the alpha activity of human EEG was studied in the state of rest and during arithmetical task performance with mono- and binaural listening of task instruction and binaural listening of music. The amplitude, duration, amplitude variability and steepness of between-segment transitions were calculated as segmental characteristics. It was shown that all of these characteristics are sensitive to the cognitive tests but the degree of this sensitivity depends on the cortex area and type of the cognitive task. Most pronounced changes in the segmental characteristics were observed during arithmetic task with left-side instruction presentation and minimal changes were seen during binaural listening of music.     

Intercentral Relations of the Human EEG during Listening to Music

Different musical styles and intensities produce characteristic patterns of changes in the correlation of neocortical biopotentials. Classical music of three intensities and rock music of medium and high intensities were shown to produce asymmetry in the pattern of coherence (Coh) of the cortical activity of listeners: intrahemispheric Coh in the right hemisphere increased, while a decrease in the EEG synchronization prevailed in the left hemisphere. A focus of Coh integration, most pronounced for the γ frequencies, was formed during listening to both classical and rock music (except rock music of a low intensity). Listening to rock music of a low intensity substantially increased the probability of a decrease in intra- and interhemispheric Coh in both hemispheres, which was pronounced in all frequency bands. Listening to rock music changed interhemispheric Coh in a greater percent of cases than listening to classical music.__________Translated from Fiziologiya Cheloveka, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005, pp. 27–32.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Sakharov, Davydov, Pavlygina.     

Eyes Wide Shut: Amygdala Mediates Eyes-Closed Effect on Emotional Experience with Music

The perceived emotional value of stimuli and, as a consequence the subjective emotional experience with them, can be affected by context-dependent styles of processing. Therefore, the investigation of the neural correlates of emotional experience requires accounting for such a variable, a matter of an experimental challenge. Closing the eyes affects the style of attending to auditory stimuli by modifying the perceptual relationship with the environment without changing the stimulus itself. In the current study, we used fMRI to characterize the neural mediators of such modification on the experience of emotionality in music. We assumed that closed eyes position will reveal interplay between different levels of neural processing of emotions. More specifically, we focused on the amygdala as a central node of the limbic system and on its co-activation with the Locus Ceruleus (LC) and Ventral Prefrontal Cortex (VPFC); regions involved in processing of, respectively, ‘low’, visceral-, and ‘high’, cognitive-related, values of emotional stimuli. Fifteen healthy subjects listened to negative and neutral music excerpts with eyes closed or open. As expected, behavioral results showed that closing the eyes while listening to emotional music resulted in enhanced rating of emotionality, specifically of negative music. In correspondence, fMRI results showed greater activation in the amygdala when subjects listened to the emotional music with eyes closed relative to eyes open. More so, by using voxel-based correlation and a dynamic causal model analyses we demonstrated that increased amygdala activation to negative music with eyes closed led to increased activations in the LC and VPFC. This finding supports a system-based model of perceived emotionality in which the amygdala has a central role in mediating the effect of context-based processing style by recruiting neural operations involved in both visceral (i.e. ‘low’) and cognitive (i.e. ‘high’) related processes of emotions.     

Hemispheric Asymmetry in Prosody Perception by Healthy Subjects and Schizophrenic Patients

The interhemispheric interactions in perception of Russian prosody were studied in the norm and in schizophrenia as a clinical model of impaired hemispheric interactions. Monaural presentation of stimuli and binaural presentation in a free acoustical field were used. Sentences with main variants of Russian prosodic intonations were used as stimuli. The response time and the number of erroneous responses were recorded. In binaural listening without headphones, no significant difference in the percent of errors in identifying the emotional prosody was found between healthy subjects and schizophrenics. Compared with the healthy subjects, the patients made more errors in understanding the logical stress and fewer errors in understanding the syntagmatic segmentation. By response time, a significant dominance of the left ear was revealed in the healthy subjects during monaural listening to sentences with emotional prosody and complete or incomplete sentences, whereas no significant ear dominance was found in the schizophrenics. During monaural listening to sentences with logical stress, the response time was shorter when stimuli were presented to the right ear both in the healthy subjects and in the schizophrenics. The results testified that the functional brain asymmetry in schizophrenics is flattened. The flattening was less evident in the perception of a logical stress in a sentence and did not significantly affect the efficiency of identification of emotional prosody and syntagmatic segmentation of a sentence.     

Spectral analysis of the human EEG while listening to music

EEG was recorded from 16 electrodes (International 10-20 System) in 14 healthy volunteers aged from 18 to 45 in the state of rest and during listening to music (popular classical symphonic pieces). The EEG spectral analysis was carried out. Presentation of musical pieces increased the EEG spectral power in the alpha-range in the parietal and occipital areas of both hemispheres. During repeated listening of the same musical fragment there was a tendency for attenuation of these changes. A significant decrease in the peak frequency of the alpha-band was found in the process of listening. The spectral values did not significantly differ between the left and right hemispheres. The findings suggest a decrease in the level of CNS activation under the influence of music.     

Segregation and Integration of Auditory Streams when Listening to Multi-Part Music

In our daily lives, auditory stream segregation allows us to differentiate concurrent sound sources and to make sense of the scene we are experiencing. However, a combination of segregation and the concurrent integration of auditory streams is necessary in order to analyze the relationship between streams and thus perceive a coherent auditory scene. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates the relative role and neural underpinnings of these listening strategies in multi-part musical stimuli. We compare a real human performance of a piano duet and a synthetic stimulus of the same duet in a prioritized integrative attention paradigm that required the simultaneous segregation and integration of auditory streams. In so doing, we manipulate the degree to which the attended part of the duet led either structurally (attend melody vs. attend accompaniment) or temporally (asynchronies vs. no asynchronies between parts), and thus the relative contributions of integration and segregation used to make an assessment of the leader-follower relationship. We show that perceptually the relationship between parts is biased towards the conventional structural hierarchy in western music in which the melody generally dominates (leads) the accompaniment. Moreover, the assessment varies as a function of both cognitive load, as shown through difficulty ratings and the interaction of the temporal and the structural relationship factors. Neurally, we see that the temporal relationship between parts, as one important cue for stream segregation, revealed distinct neural activity in the planum temporale. By contrast, integration used when listening to both the temporally separated performance stimulus and the temporally fused synthetic stimulus resulted in activation of the intraparietal sulcus. These results support the hypothesis that the planum temporale and IPS are key structures underlying the mechanisms of segregation and integration of auditory streams, respectively.     

Deactivation of the default mode network as a marker of impaired consciousness: an fMRI study

Diagnosis of patients with a disorder of consciousness is very challenging. Previous studies investigating resting state networks demonstrate that 2 main features of the so-called default mode network (DMN), metabolism and functional connectivity, are impaired in patients with a disorder of consciousness. However, task-induced deactivation--a third main feature of the DMN--has not been explored in a group of patients. Deactivation of the DMN is supposed to reflect interruptions of introspective processes. Seventeen patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS, former vegetative state), 8 patients in minimally conscious state (MCS), and 25 healthy controls were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging during a passive sentence listening task. Results show that deactivation in medial regions is reduced in MCS and absent in UWS patients compared to healthy controls. Moreover, behavioral scores assessing the level of consciousness correlate with deactivation in patients. On single-subject level, all control subjects but only 2 patients in MCS and 6 with UWS exposed deactivation. Interestingly, all patients who deactivated during speech processing (except for one) showed activation in left frontal regions which are associated with conscious processing. Our results indicate that deactivation of the DMN can be associated with the level of consciousness by selecting those who are able to interrupt ongoing introspective processes. In consequence, deactivation of the DMN may function as a marker of consciousness.     

Intercentral correlations in the cerebral cortex according to the EEG coherence index after restoration of consciousness and speech following prolonged coma

Power spectra and coherence function of EEG of various cortical areas of both hemispheres were analyzed in 9 patients with extremely protracted loss of consciousness. Five patients were in the state of posttraumatic apallic syndrome lasting for more than 4 years in one patient, and 4-9 months with successive lethal outcome in 4 patients. One patient for more than 2 years was in a state of areactivity to external signals. In 3 patients the process of recovery of consciousness and speech began in 1-2 months. At the apallic syndrome, only low-frequency EEG components were present in spectrograms, and the values of coherence function were sharply decreased. With recovering consciousness and speech, a gradual appearance of alpha-activity was observed as well as an increase of coherence values at the frequency of the alpha-rhythm. The recovery of intercentral EEG relations in the motor-verbal cortical area was shown to play a special role in further normalization of connections in the cerebral cortex.     

Action in Perception: Prominent Visuo-Motor Functional Symmetry in Musicians during Music Listening

Musical training leads to sensory and motor neuroplastic changes in the human brain. Motivated by findings on enlarged corpus callosum in musicians and asymmetric somatomotor representation in string players, we investigated the relationship between musical training, callosal anatomy, and interhemispheric functional symmetry during music listening. Functional symmetry was increased in musicians compared to nonmusicians, and in keyboardists compared to string players. This increased functional symmetry was prominent in visual and motor brain networks. Callosal size did not significantly differ between groups except for the posterior callosum in musicians compared to nonmusicians. We conclude that the distinctive postural and kinematic symmetry in instrument playing cross-modally shapes information processing in sensory-motor cortical areas during music listening. This cross-modal plasticity suggests that motor training affects music perception.     

Electrographic Correlates of Brain Reactions to Afferent Stimuli in Postcomatose Unconscious States after Severe Brain Injury

Analysis of the character and systemic organization of cerebral reactions to external effects aids in adequate evaluation of functional and adaptive human capabilities in norm and pathology. Changes in the spatiotemporal organization of the EEG (according to visual and spectral coherence analyses, as well as localization of equivalent dipole sources of pathological EEG phenomena) and the electrooculogram in response to afferent stimuli at different stages of postcomatose recovery of mental activity were studied in 84 patients with severe brain injury in a prolonged postcomatose unconscious state. Both standard indifferent (a rhythmically flashing light and an acoustic tone) and functionally significant (a moving contrasting black-and-white strip, a red spot, the mother’s voice, music, etc.) afferent stimuli were used. Functionally different reactive changes in the EEG were detected even in deep inhibition of consciousness (a vegetative state). EEG reactions including a strengthening of pathological foci in the CNS with dominant features suggested a poor prognosis. In the absence of such foci, a positive activating effect on mental recovery was found for afferent stimulation, in particular, functionally significant stimulation. Selective sensitivity of the CNS to certain external stimuli was observed for certain unconscious states.__________Translated from Fiziologiya Cheloveka, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2005, pp. 5–15.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Sharova.     

Autonomic Effects of Music in Health and Crohn's Disease: The Impact of Isochronicity,Emotional Valence,and Tempo

BackgroundMusic can evoke strong emotions and thus elicit significant autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses. However, previous studies investigating music-evoked ANS effects produced inconsistent results. In particular, it is not clear (a) whether simply a musical tactus (without common emotional components of music) is sufficient to elicit ANS effects; (b) whether changes in the tempo of a musical piece contribute to the ANS effects; (c) whether emotional valence of music influences ANS effects; and (d) whether music-elicited ANS effects are comparable in healthy subjects and patients with Crohn´s disease (CD, an inflammatory bowel disease suspected to be associated with autonomic dysfunction).MethodsTo address these issues, three experiments were conducted, with a total of n = 138 healthy subjects and n = 19 CD patients. Heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and electrodermal activity (EDA) were recorded while participants listened to joyful pleasant music, isochronous tones, and unpleasant control stimuli.ResultsCompared to silence, both pleasant music and unpleasant control stimuli elicited an increase in HR and a decrease in a variety of HRV parameters. Surprisingly, similar ANS effects were elicited by isochronous tones (i.e., simply by a tactus). ANS effects did not differ between pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, and different tempi of the music did not entrain ANS activity. Finally, music-evoked ANS effects did not differ between healthy individuals and CD patients.ConclusionsThe isochronous pulse of music (i.e., the tactus) is a major factor of music-evoked ANS effects. These ANS effects are characterized by increased sympathetic activity. The emotional valence of a musical piece contributes surprisingly little to the ANS activity changes evoked by that piece.     

Universality in the brain while listening to music.

The human brain, which is one of the most complex organic systems, involves billions of interacting physiological and chemical processes that give rise to experimentally observed neuroelectrical activity, which is called an electroencephalogram (EEG). The presence of non-stationarity and intermittency render standard available methods unsuitable for detecting hidden dynamical patterns in the EEG. In this paper, a method that is suitable for non-stationary signals and preserving the phase characteristics and that combines wavelet and Hilbert transforms was applied to multivariate EEG signals from human subjects at rest as well as in different cognitive states: listening to music, listening to text and performing spatial imagination. It was found that, if suitably rescaled, the gamma band EEG over distributed brain areas while listening to music can be described by a universal and homogeneous scaling, whereas this homogeneity in scale is reduced at resting conditions and also during listening to text and performing spatial imagination. The degree of universality is characterized by a Kullback-Leibler divergence measure. By statistical surrogate analysis, nonlinear phase interaction was found to play an important role in exhibiting universality among multiple cortical regions.     

Influence of sound and light on heart rate variability

The effects of acoustic and visual stimuli and their synergistic effects on heart rate variability including gender differences were investigated. Of particular interest was the influence of visual stimulus on heart rate variability during listening to simple sounds of different characters. Twelve male and 12 female university students were selected as subjects. The subjects listened at rest to 7 different figures of sound at loudness levels averaging 60 dB. Beat-to-beat R-R intervals were continuously recorded under the closed-eye condition (CEC) and the open-eye condition (OEC) prior to, during, and immediately after the exposure to acoustic stimuli. Low frequency (LF) power was defined over 0.04-0.15 Hz and high frequency (HF) power over 0.15-0.40 Hz. Cardiac autonomic function was estimated by plotting LF/HF in standard measure against HF in standard measure and by plotting LF/HF (%) against HF (%), accompanied by a demarcated central area. Values of LF/HF tended to be smaller under CEC than under OEC. Values of HF while listening to a 110 Hz sine wave under CEC were significantly greater than values for 880 Hz and 3520 Hz sine waves, or for 110 Hz or 880 Hz sawtooth waves, under OEC. Under CEC, values of HF for 7 figures of sound were greater in females than in males. The value of HF of sine wave for 110 Hz under CEC and OEC was significantly greater than that for white noise under the OEC. The results suggest that the cardiac parasympathetic nervous activity during auditory excitation increases with elimination of visual stimuli and tends to be greater in females than in males.     

The Goals and Effects of Music Listening and Their Relationship to the Strength of Music Preference

Individual differences in the strength of music preference are among the most intricate psychological phenomena. While one person gets by very well without music, another person needs to listen to music every day and spends a lot of temporal and financial resources on listening to music, attending concerts, or buying concert tickets. Where do these differences come from? The hypothesis presented in this article is that the strength of music preference is mainly informed by the functions that music fulfills in people’s lives (e.g., to regulate emotions, moods, or physiological arousal; to promote self-awareness; to foster social relatedness). Data were collected with a diary study, in which 121 respondents documented the goals they tried to attain and the effects that actually occurred for up to 5 music-listening episodes per day for 10 successive days. As expected, listeners reporting more intense experience of the functional use of music in the past (1) had a stronger intention to listen to music to attain specific goals in specific situations and (2) showed a larger overall strength of music preference. It is concluded that the functional effectiveness of music listening should be incorporated in existing models and frameworks of music preference to produce better predictions of interindividual differences in the strength of music preference. The predictability of musical style/genre preferences is also discussed with regard to the present results.     

On the Problem of Cooperation of the Reaction of Hands: I. Cooperation of Hand Reaction to Sound and Light Stimuli in Healthy Subjects

Coordinated reaction of hands was analyzed during examination of healthy subjects and patients with focal lesions of the central nervous system in order to find the morphological structures responsible for such cooperation. Results of investigation of coordinated hand reaction in healthy subjects to sound and light stimuli with a warning signal are presented. The degree of cooperation was estimated by the correlation coefficient between the values of the reaction time of the right and left hands under conditions of their simultaneous response. In healthy subjects, there exists a strong positive correlation, whose variability in repeated examinations is determined by constitutional features of the subject.     

Effects of pre-exercise listening to slow and fast rhythm music on supramaximal cycle performance and selected metabolic variables

We examined the effect of listening to two different types of music (with slow and fast rhythm), prior to supramaximal cycle exercise, on performance, heart rate, the concentration of lactate and ammonia in blood, and the concentration of catecholamines in plasma. Six male students participated in this study. After listening to slow rhythm or fast rhythm music for 20 min, the subjects performed supramaximal exercise for 45 s using a cycle ergometer. Listening to slow and fast rhythm music prior to supramaximal exercise did not significantly affect the mean power output. The plasma norepinephrine concentration immediately before the end of listening to slow rhythm music was significantly lower than before listening (p < 0.05). The plasma epinephrine concentration immediately before the end of listening to fast rhythm music was significantly higher than before listening (p < 0.05). The type of music had no effect on blood lactate and ammonia levels or on plasma catecholamine levels following exercise. In conclusion, listening to slow rhythm music decreases the plasma norepinephrine level, and listening to fast rhythm music increases the plasma epinephrine level. The type of music has no impact on power output during exercise.