Dependence of the circadian organization of heart rate regulation by prolonged musical sensory influence

It's shown that prolonged acoustic sensory influence in the form of classic music may change neurovegetative control of heart rate, enhancing the parasympathetic influences on heart rate variability, especially in night. These alterations increase expression of diurnal rhythm of ergotropic and trophotropic systems activity and lead to normalization of circadian profile of heart rate.     

Hearing feelings: affective categorization of music and speech in alexithymia, an ERP study

Background

Alexithymia, a condition characterized by deficits in interpreting and regulating feelings, is a risk factor for a variety of psychiatric conditions. Little is known about how alexithymia influences the processing of emotions in music and speech. Appreciation of such emotional qualities in auditory material is fundamental to human experience and has profound consequences for functioning in daily life. We investigated the neural signature of such emotional processing in alexithymia by means of event-related potentials.

Methodology

Affective music and speech prosody were presented as targets following affectively congruent or incongruent visual word primes in two conditions. In two further conditions, affective music and speech prosody served as primes and visually presented words with affective connotations were presented as targets. Thirty-two participants (16 male) judged the affective valence of the targets. We tested the influence of alexithymia on cross-modal affective priming and on N400 amplitudes, indicative of individual sensitivity to an affective mismatch between words, prosody, and music. Our results indicate that the affective priming effect for prosody targets tended to be reduced with increasing scores on alexithymia, while no behavioral differences were observed for music and word targets. At the electrophysiological level, alexithymia was associated with significantly smaller N400 amplitudes in response to affectively incongruent music and speech targets, but not to incongruent word targets.

Conclusions

Our results suggest a reduced sensitivity for the emotional qualities of speech and music in alexithymia during affective categorization. This deficit becomes evident primarily in situations in which a verbalization of emotional information is required.     

Interhemispheric EEG interrelations in recognition of masked visual images accompanied by music

Changes in the EEG depend on the style of accompanying music. Classical music produces more patterns with increased diagonal coherences in the γ frequency band, where two foci of integration are formed at points T ₄ and T ₆. During listening to rock music, a larger proportion of all changes occurred in the θ-and α₁ frequency bands; an integration focus was formed at point T ₆ in the α₁ and γ frequency bands. An increase in diagonal coherences that was observed during the recognition was especially pronounced in the Δ-, θ-and α₁ frequency bands. In addition, there was an increase in the coherence between the potentials recorded at points O ₁-P ₄ and O ₂-F ₇, and it was observed in all the frequency bands. During the recognition of masked visual images accompanied by classical or rock music, there were more patterns with an increased diagonal coherence of the currently dominant activity. Before erroneous recognition, a widely generalized increase in coherence over the brain cortex was observed in the Δ, θ, and α₁ bands, which was an informative indicator of the subsequent erroneous recognition. In tests with recognition unaccompanied by music, as well as with music, the main change in symmetrical coherences was either a decrease in or an absence of changes in this indicator versus the background value.     

Experimental and clinical aspects of auto and coherence spectra of blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rhythms]

Auto- coherence and phase spectra of blood-pressure, heart-rate, and respiration changes at various intervals were calculated in 34 healthy individuals and 46 patients with neurovegetative disorders in a direct way, partly by means of the Fast-Fourier transformations. It was only by 18-min recordings that reliably reproducible spectra could be obtained that permit exact evaluation of the statistical properties of these biorhythms.     

A Systematic Review of Music Therapy Practice and Outcomes with Acute Adult Psychiatric In-Patients

Background and Objectives

There is an emerging evidence base for the use of music therapy in the treatment of severe mental illness. Whilst different models of music therapy have been developed in mental health care, none have specifically accounted for the features and context of acute in-patient settings. This review aimed to identify how music therapy is provided for acute adult psychiatric in-patients and what outcomes have been reported.

Review Methods

A systematic review using medical, psychological and music therapy databases. Papers describing music therapy with acute adult psychiatric in-patients were included. Analysis utilised narrative synthesis.

Results

98 papers were identified, of which 35 reported research findings. Open group work and active music making for nonverbal expression alongside verbal reflection was emphasised. Aims were engagement, communication and interpersonal relationships focusing upon immediate areas of need rather than longer term insight. The short stay, patient diversity and institutional structure influenced delivery and resulted in a focus on single sessions, high session frequency, more therapist direction, flexible use of musical activities, predictable musical structures, and clear realistic goals. Outcome studies suggested effectiveness in addressing a range of symptoms, but were limited by methodological shortcomings and small sample sizes. Studies with significant positive effects all used active musical participation with a degree of structure and were delivered in four or more sessions.

Conclusions

No single clearly defined model exists for music therapy with adults in acute psychiatric in-patient settings, and described models are not conclusive. Greater frequency of therapy, active structured music making with verbal discussion, consistency of contact and boundaries, an emphasis on building a therapeutic relationship and building patient resources may be of particular importance. Further research is required to develop specific music therapy models for this patient group that can be tested in experimental studies.     

Broadened population-level frequency tuning in human auditory cortex of portable music player users

Nowadays, many people use portable players to enrich their daily life with enjoyable music. However, in noisy environments, the player volume is often set to extremely high levels in order to drown out the intense ambient noise and satisfy the appetite for music. Extensive and inappropriate usage of portable music players might cause subtle damages in the auditory system, which are not behaviorally detectable in an early stage of the hearing impairment progress. Here, by means of magnetoencephalography, we objectively examined detrimental effects of portable music player misusage on the population-level frequency tuning in the human auditory cortex. We compared two groups of young people: one group had listened to music with portable music players intensively for a long period of time, while the other group had not. Both groups performed equally and normally in standard audiological examinations (pure tone audiogram, speech test, and hearing-in-noise test). However, the objective magnetoencephalographic data demonstrated that the population-level frequency tuning in the auditory cortex of the portable music player users was significantly broadened compared to the non-users, when attention was distracted from the auditory modality; this group difference vanished when attention was directed to the auditory modality. Our conclusion is that extensive and inadequate usage of portable music players could cause subtle damages, which standard behavioral audiometric measures fail to detect in an early stage. However, these damages could lead to future irreversible hearing disorders, which would have a huge negative impact on the quality of life of those affected, and the society as a whole.     

Fourteen-month-old infants use interpersonal synchrony as a cue to direct helpfulness

Musical behaviours such as dancing, singing and music production, which require the ability to entrain to a rhythmic beat, encourage high levels of interpersonal coordination. Such coordination has been associated with increased group cohesion and social bonding between group members. Previously, we demonstrated that this association influences even the social behaviour of 14-month-old infants. Infants were significantly more likely to display helpfulness towards an adult experimenter following synchronous bouncing compared with asynchronous bouncing to music. The present experiment was designed to determine whether interpersonal synchrony acts as a cue for 14-month-olds to direct their prosocial behaviours to specific individuals with whom they have experienced synchronous movement, or whether it acts as a social prime, increasing prosocial behaviour in general. Consistent with the previous results, infants were significantly more likely to help an experimenter following synchronous versus asynchronous movement with this person. Furthermore, this manipulation did not affect infant''s behaviour towards a neutral stranger, who was not involved in any movement experience. This indicates that synchronous bouncing acts as a social cue for directing prosociality. These results have implications for how musical engagement and rhythmic synchrony affect social behaviour very early in development.     

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.     

Effects of Early Bilingual Experience with a Tone and a Non-Tone Language on Speech-Music Integration

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval) or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel). We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.     

The Paradox of Music-Evoked Sadness: An Online Survey

This study explores listeners’ experience of music-evoked sadness. Sadness is typically assumed to be undesirable and is therefore usually avoided in everyday life. Yet the question remains: Why do people seek and appreciate sadness in music? We present findings from an online survey with both Western and Eastern participants (N = 772). The survey investigates the rewarding aspects of music-evoked sadness, as well as the relative contribution of listener characteristics and situational factors to the appreciation of sad music. The survey also examines the different principles through which sadness is evoked by music, and their interaction with personality traits. Results show 4 different rewards of music-evoked sadness: reward of imagination, emotion regulation, empathy, and no “real-life” implications. Moreover, appreciation of sad music follows a mood-congruent fashion and is greater among individuals with high empathy and low emotional stability. Surprisingly, nostalgia rather than sadness is the most frequent emotion evoked by sad music. Correspondingly, memory was rated as the most important principle through which sadness is evoked. Finally, the trait empathy contributes to the evocation of sadness via contagion, appraisal, and by engaging social functions. The present findings indicate that emotional responses to sad music are multifaceted, are modulated by empathy, and are linked with a multidimensional experience of pleasure. These results were corroborated by a follow-up survey on happy music, which indicated differences between the emotional experiences resulting from listening to sad versus happy music. This is the first comprehensive survey of music-evoked sadness, revealing that listening to sad music can lead to beneficial emotional effects such as regulation of negative emotion and mood as well as consolation. Such beneficial emotional effects constitute the prime motivations for engaging with sad music in everyday life.     

Precursors of Dancing and Singing to Music in Three- to Four-Months-Old Infants

Dancing and singing to music involve auditory-motor coordination and have been essential to our human culture since ancient times. Although scholars have been trying to understand the evolutionary and developmental origin of music, early human developmental manifestations of auditory-motor interactions in music have not been fully investigated. Here we report limb movements and vocalizations in three- to four-months-old infants while they listened to music and were in silence. In the group analysis, we found no significant increase in the amount of movement or in the relative power spectrum density around the musical tempo in the music condition compared to the silent condition. Intriguingly, however, there were two infants who demonstrated striking increases in the rhythmic movements via kicking or arm-waving around the musical tempo during listening to music. Monte-Carlo statistics with phase-randomized surrogate data revealed that the limb movements of these individuals were significantly synchronized to the musical beat. Moreover, we found a clear increase in the formant variability of vocalizations in the group during music perception. These results suggest that infants at this age are already primed with their bodies to interact with music via limb movements and vocalizations.     

Discriminative and reinforcing stimulus properties of music for rats

We trained rats to discriminate music by Bach from that by Stravinsky using operant conditioning. The rats successfully learned the discrimination and transferred their discrimination to novel music by the same artists. Then, we trained rats on concurrent-chain schedule in which the terminal links were associated with different music, Bach or Stravinsky. The rats did not show strong preference for either style of music, although one subject showed a preference for Bach and another subject preferred Stravinsky. Finally, we examined the validity of the concurrent-chain procedure as a method of preference measurement with conspecific vocalization evoked by an aversive experience. Most of the rats preferred white noise to the conspecific vocalization. Therefore, music has a discriminative stimulus property but not a clear reinforcing property for rats.     

Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage

This article examines how the performance of a variety of Islamic music in transnational cultural circuits helps to promote the idea of a style of sacred music within the category of world music. Taking as an example the performance of the mawlawiyya, or "Whirling Dervish," music and dance by a Syrian–based ensemble, I show how the idea of an authentic local Syrian sacred music tradition requires its performance globally. I use the concept of the "world stage" to examine how musical performance practices that are represented as authentic local traditions obtain both their authenticity and their local specificity through their staging in global contexts. I further explore how such musical styles as sacred and Sufi emerge as naturalized categories in world music discourse, and how processes of differentiation and commodification reconfigure both the "local" and "global." [Keywords: world music, globalization, style, Syria, Islam]     

Spectral Analysis of the Human EEG during Listening to Musical Compositions

A reorganization of the spectral power (SP) of the human brain potentials takes place during listening to music. The characteristic features of the reorganization depend on the type of the musical composition. Listening to classical music (of low and moderate intensity) produces an increase in the SP of the high-frequency EEG (₂, ₁, ₂, and bands) widely generalized over the brain cortex. Listening to rock music (of moderate and high intensity) produces an increase in the SP predominantly in the and ₁ frequency bands. There were variations within each EEG pattern caused by different intensity of the music listened to.     

Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise

Music and exercise can both affect autonomic nervous system activity. However, the effects of the combination of music and exercise on autonomic activity are poorly understood. Additionally, it remains unknown whether music affects post-exercise orthostatic tolerance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of music on autonomic nervous system activity in orthostatic tolerance after exercise. Twenty-six healthy graduate students participated in four sessions in a random order on four separate days: a sedentary session, a music session, a bicycling session, and a bicycling with music session. Participants were asked to listen to their favorite music and to exercise on a cycle ergometer. We evaluated autonomic nervous system activity before and after each session using frequency analysis of heart rate variability. High frequency power, an index of parasympathetic nervous system activity, was significantly increased in the music session. Heart rate was increased, and high frequency power was decreased, in the bicycling session. There was no significant difference in high frequency power before and after the bicycling with music session, although heart rate was significantly increased. Additionally, both music and exercise did not significantly affect heart rate, systolic blood pressure or also heart rate variability indices in the orthostatic test. These data suggest that music increased parasympathetic activity and attenuated the exercise-induced decrease in parasympathetic activity without altering the orthostatic tolerance after exercise. Therefore, music may be an effective approach for improving post-exercise parasympathetic reactivation, resulting in a faster recovery and a reduction in cardiac stress after exercise.     

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.     

Well-Loved Music Robustly Relieves Pain: A Randomized,Controlled Trial

Music has pain-relieving effects, but its mechanisms remain unclear. We sought to verify previously studied analgesic components and further elucidate the underpinnings of music analgesia. Using a well-characterized conditioning-enhanced placebo model, we examined whether boosting expectations would enhance or interfere with analgesia from strongly preferred music. A two-session experiment was performed with 48 healthy, pain experiment-naïve participants. In a first cohort, 36 were randomized into 3 treatment groups, including music enhanced with positive expectancy, non-musical sound enhanced with positive expectancy, and no expectancy enhancement. A separate replication cohort of 12 participants received only expectancy-enhanced music following the main experiment to verify the results of expectancy-manipulation on music. Primary outcome measures included the change in subjective pain ratings to calibrated experimental noxious heat stimuli, as well as changes in treatment expectations. Without conditioning, expectations were strongly in favor of music compared to non-musical sound. While measured expectations were enhanced by conditioning, this failed to affect either music or sound analgesia significantly. Strongly preferred music on its own was as pain relieving as conditioning-enhanced strongly preferred music, and more analgesic than enhanced sound. Our results demonstrate the pain-relieving power of personal music even over enhanced expectations.

Trial Information

Clinicaltrials.gov {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT01835275","term_id":"NCT01835275"}}NCT01835275.     

The Role of Trait and State Absorption in the Enjoyment of Music

Little is known about the role of state versus trait characteristics on our enjoyment of music. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of state and trait absorption upon preference for music, particularly preference for music that evokes negative emotions. The sample consisted of 128 participants who were asked to listen to two pieces of self-selected music and rate the music on variables including preference and felt and expressed emotions. Participants completed a brief measure of state absorption after listening to each piece, and a trait absorption inventory. State absorption was strongly positively correlated with music preference, whereas trait absorption was not. Trait absorption was related to preference for negative emotions in music, with chi-square analyses demonstrating greater enjoyment of negative emotions in music among individuals with high trait absorption. This is the first study to show that state and trait absorption have separable and distinct effects on a listener’s music experience, with state characteristics impacting music enjoyment in the moment, and trait characteristics influencing music preference based on its emotional content.     

iPods--a surrogate coach for junior and subelite athletes: new ideas based on a review of the literature

The global proliferation of MP3 players such as iPods means coaches have an opportunity to access a tool to enhance coaching that much of the population already use widely, without considerable increase in investment of time or money. Research evidence strongly indicates that music has the ability to influence psychological and physiological factors and can improve performance measures significantly. Additionally, the nature of athlete's self-talk could possibly be influenced through the use of 'digiprompts,' resulting in more focused and productive training sessions. Research evidence also indicates a limited effect on athlete adaptation during unsupervised training sessions related to decreased training frequency and intensity. Coaches should always look for ways to enhance their coaching, but new technologies and methodologies will only be widely accepted if seen by the coaching community as readily accessible and able to facilitate efficient improvement in coaching methodologies and athlete development. With technological advances in music delivery systems and digital editing, digital media and delivery systems for distance coaching should be explored. This paper reviews several fields of research in an attempt to highlight how the use of what is now common digital technology can create a 'surrogate coach.' Through the development of structured and specific digital training aids, the effects of music as an ergogenic aid means the use of MP3 players seems a logical step forward for coaches, and unsupervised training could potentially be made more effective.     

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.