Adopting a music-to-heart rate alignment strategy to measure the impact of music and its tempo on human heart rate

Abstract

Music is frequently used as a means of relaxation. Conversely, it is used as a means of arousal in sports and exercise contexts. Previous research suggests that tempo is one of the most significant determinants of music-related arousal and relaxation effects. Here we investigate the specific effect of music tempo, but also more generally, the influence of music on human heart rate. We took the pulses of 32 participants in silence, and then we played them non-vocal, ambient music at a tempo corresponding to their heart rates.Finally, we played the same music again, either with the tempo increased or decreased by a factor of 45%, 30%, or 15%; or maintaining the same tempo as in the first playing.Mixed-design ANOVA tests revealed a significant increase in heart rate while listening to the music as compared with silence (p < .05). Besides, substantial decreases in tempo (-45% or -30%) could account for smaller subsequent heart rate reductions (p < .05).We neither found links between increases in tempo (+15%, +30%, and +45%) and heart rate change, nor small decreases (-15%). In addition, neither effects of gender, music training, nor of musical preference were found. This indicates that during passive music listening, music exerts a general arousal effect on human heart rate, which might be regulated by tempo. These results are a major contribution to the way in which music may be used in everyday activities.Short Title: The impact of music and music tempo on human heart rate 3 How is music related to human heart rate? Particularly in music therapy, but also in sports and exercise contexts, this question has puzzled many due to the implications of the answer. For instance, the use of music has long been considered effective for enhancing exercise (Karageorghis & Terry, 1997). Music reflects participants' physiological arousal level (Berlyne, 1971;North & Hargreaves, 1997), and it was established that, in everyday settings, people prefer to listen to auditory stimuli with tempi in the range of the normal heart rate (i.e., 70-100 BPM) (Iwanaga, 1995a(Iwanaga, , 1995b.In moderate to high-intensity exercise, however, there is a preference for medium-and fast-paced music (Karageorghis, Jones, & Low, 2006).Listening to certain types of musical stimuli has also been shown to attenuate heart rate after stressful tasks (Knight & Rickard, 2001). Slow music, for example classical or meditative music, has often been demonstrated to initiate reductions in heart rate, resulting in greater relaxation (Bernardi, Porta, & Sleight, 2006;Chlan, 1998; Hilz et al., 2014;Krumhansl, 1997;Nomura, Yoshimura, & Kurosawa, 2003). Combined with evidence of decreases in blood pressure, respiratory rate, and subjective anxiety levels (Knight & Rickard, 2001; Hilz et al., 2014;Möckel et al., 1994), such findings support the claim that listening to certain music could serve as an effective anxiolytic treatment, reducing stress levels and inducing relaxation. Based on such results, it is apprehensible that the common use of music in therape...

Slow motion in films and video clips: Music influences perceived duration and emotion, autonomic physiological activation and pupillary responses

“…As mentioned before, the durations of the SloMo videos of our study were also underestimated, indicating that there could be cross-modal effects of stretched time both for visual and auditory stimuli. In another recent study, the tempo of the music was both accelerated and decelerated [ 52 ]. While the slower tempi in the digitally stretched music condition led to decreases in mean heart rate, no effects were found for versions in higher tempi.…”

Physiological and Behavioral Factors in Musicians’ Performance Tempo

“…Both the rhythms of cardiac activity and of musical behaviors form long time series of interrelated events; a few studies have addressed how heart rate modulations and musical tempo change together over time. For example, passive listening to music has shown decreased heart rate in response to slower-tempo music (Van Dyck et al, 2017) and increased heart rate during fast-tempo music (Gomez and Danuser, 2007). Heart rate variability during music listening changes less predictably; da Silva et al (2014) found no difference in HRV between rest (baseline) and music listening, whereas Bretherton et al (2019) reported that only some tempo manipulations elicited HRV changes relative to a rest condition.…”

The effect of a rhythmic pulse on the heart rate: Little evidence for rhythmical ‘entrainment’ and ‘synchronization’

“…This result is in contrast to positive manipulations of the HR in both tempo directions as reported in previous studies (Bason & Celler, 1972; Fukumoto & Nomura, 2009; Saperston, 1993). These ambiguous results may be explained by the fact that Van Dyck et al (2017) did not match the physiological preconditions for entrainment. As reported by Bason and Celler (1972) and Saperston (1993), successful manipulation of the HR only occurred when the frequency of the stimulus was coupled to the actual HR of a listener in real-time and when the stimulus was presented within a critical time window (‘within approximately one beat of the heart rate’, Saperston, 1993, p. 1).…”

“…Concerning the entrainment effect, a recent study of Van Dyck et al (2017) found effects on the HR using discontinuous and random changes in musical tempo only for substantial tempo decreases. In their study, non-vocal ambient music was presented to 32 participants.…”

“…For example, the latency of the feedback loop measured in Bason and Celler (1972) remains unknown as well as the temporal precision of the manually adapted tempo-changes in Saperston (1993) and the technical realization of the feedback loop in Bason and Celler (1972). A further important difference between the studies is the different kind of stimulus: using a complex musical stimulus (Saperston, 1993; Van Dyck et al, 2017) may maximize the ecological validity, but might result in a loss in control and an increase of confounding variables. Therefore, we decided in favour of control and used a simple rhythmic pulse.…”