Visual sequence encoding is modulated by music schematic structure and familiarity.

Music is omnipresent in daily life and may interact with critical cognitive processes including memory. Despite music's presence during diverse daily activities including studying, commuting, or working, existing literature has yielded mixed results as to whether music improves or impairs memory for information experienced in parallel. To elucidate how music memory and its predictive structure modulate the encoding of novel information, we developed a cross-modal sequence learning task during which participants acquired sequences of abstract shapes accompanied with paired music. Our goal was to investigate whether familiar and structurally regular music could provide a "temporal schema" (rooted in the organized and hierarchical structure of music) to enhance the acquisition of parallel temporally-ordered visual information. Results revealed a complex interplay between music familiarity and music structural regularity in learning paired visual sequences. Notably, compared to a control condition, listening to well-learned, regularly-structured music (music with high predictability) significantly facilitated visual sequence encoding, yielding quicker learning and retrieval speed. Conversely, learned but irregular music (where music memory violated musical syntax) significantly impaired sequence encoding. While those findings supported our mechanistic framework, intriguingly, unlearned irregular music-characterized by the lowest predictability-also demonstrated memory enhancement. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that concurrent music can modulate visual sequence learning, and the effect varies depending on the interaction between both music familiarity and regularity, offering insights into potential applications for enhancing human memory.

State-dependent connectivity in auditory-reward networks predicts peak pleasure experiences to music.

Music can evoke pleasurable and rewarding experiences. Past studies that examined task-related brain activity revealed individual differences in musical reward sensitivity traits and linked them to interactions between the auditory and reward systems. However, state-dependent fluctuations in spontaneous neural activity in relation to music-driven rewarding experiences have not been studied. Here, we used functional MRI to examine whether the coupling of auditory-reward networks during a silent period immediately before music listening can predict the degree of musical rewarding experience of human participants (N = 49). We used machine learning models and showed that the functional connectivity between auditory and reward networks, but not others, could robustly predict subjective, physiological, and neurobiological aspects of the strong musical reward of chills. Specifically, the right auditory cortex-striatum/orbitofrontal connections predicted the reported duration of chills and the activation level of nucleus accumbens and insula, whereas the auditory-amygdala connection was associated with psychophysiological arousal. Furthermore, the predictive model derived from the first sample of individuals was generalized in an independent dataset using different music samples. The generalization was successful only for state-like, pre-listening functional connectivity but not for stable, intrinsic functional connectivity. The current study reveals the critical role of sensory-reward connectivity in pre-task brain state in modulating subsequent rewarding experience.

Effects of a veterinary functional music-based enrichment program on the psychophysiological responses of farm pigs.

Intensification of swine production can predispose pigs to chronic stress, with adverse effects on the neuroendocrine and immune systems that can lead to health problems, poor welfare, and reduced production performance. Consequently, there is an interest in developing tools to prevent or eliminate chronic stress. Music is widely used as a therapeutic strategy for stress management in humans and may have similar benefits in non-human animals. This study evaluated the effects of a music-based auditory enrichment program in pigs from a multidimensional perspective by assessing psychophysiological responses. Two experimental groups of 20 pigs each were selected for the study: one enriched, exposed to a program of functional veterinary music designed for pigs, and a control group without auditory stimulation. Qualitative behavior assessment (QBA) and skin lesions indicative of agonistic behavior were used to evaluate the psychological determinants underlying the observed behaviors. Physiological assessment included hemograms, with the determination of the neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio and daily measurements of cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase levels. The results demonstrated a positive effect of a music-based auditory program on psychophysiological responses. Therefore, this strategy developed for environmental enrichment may be beneficial in reducing stress and contributing to the welfare and health of pigs under production conditions.

Effects of broadband music and audible band music on relaxation states and cognitive function in young adults: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Although broadband music with inaudible high-frequency components may benefit human well-being, this research area is largely unexplored and lacks sufficient studies on the topic. This study aimed to investigate and compare the effects of broadband and audible band music on relaxation states and cognitive function in young adults. METHODS: A single-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted in a professional soundproof laboratory from December 22, 2022, to January 18, 2023 with 32 participants randomly assigned to two groups, "Day 1 broadband + Day 2 audible band" (n = 16) and "Day 1 audible band + Day 2 broadband" (n = 16), listening to either broadband or audible band music (the same music piece played on the piano and harp) for two sessions of 15 min each on two consecutive days. Cognitive function was measured using CNS Vital Signs at pre-listening, after the 1st session, and after the 2nd session, while heart rate was monitored throughout the experiment. Visual Analog Scale was also administered for self-reported arousal, stress, thinking ability, and attention following each listening session. RESULTS: No significant differences were found in heart rate, cognitive flexibility, and executive function between the broadband listening group and the audible band-listening group (p > 0.05). However, the broadband group exhibited significant differences in mean heart rate at several time points, as well as a significant improvement in VAS stress level during the 2nd listening session compared to the 1st (p < 0.05). On the other hand, significant improvements in cognitive flexibility and executive function were observed in the audible band group across different time points (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Comparative analysis showed that broadband and audible band music influenced cognitive function differently. Short-term audible band music listening significantly improved cognitive flexibility and executive function, while short-term broadband music listening significantly reduced reaction time in cognitive tests. Additionally, broadband music consistently resulted in lower mean heart rates compared to audible band music at all time points, suggesting that it may be more effective in promoting relaxation and reducing stress, although these differences were not statistically significant. Since the cognitive enhancing effects of broadband music may be counteracted by the drowsy effect of the selected relaxing music, using different types of music may be necessary to confirm its effects in future studies.

Age and familiarity effects on musical memory.

BACKGROUND: A common complaint in older adults is trouble with their memory, especially for new information. Current knowledge about normal aging and changes in memory identify a divide between memory tasks that are unaffected by aging and those that are. Among the unaffected are recognition tasks. These memory tasks rely on accessing well-known information, often include environmental support, and tend to be automatic. Negative age effects on memory are often observed at both encoding and during recall. Older adults often have difficulty with recall tasks, particularly those that require effortful self-initiated processing, episodic memory, and retention of information about contextual cues. Research in memory for music in healthy aging suggests a skill-invariance hypothesis: that age effects dominate when general-purpose cognitive mechanisms are needed to perform the musical task at hand, while experience effects dominate when music-specific knowledge is needed to perform the task [1]. AIMS: The goals of this pair of studies were to investigate the effects of age and familiarity on musical memory in the context of real pieces of music, and to compare a live concert experimental setting with a lab-based experimental setting. METHOD: Participants' task was to click a button (or press the spacebar) when they heard the target theme in three pieces of music. One was Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the others were original pieces commissioned for this study, one tonal and one atonal. Participants heard the relevant theme three times before listening to a piece of music. The music was performed by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra; participants either attended the concert, or watched a recording of the concert in the lab. Participants also completed two short cognitive tests and filled out a questionnaire collecting demographic information and a hearing abilities self-assessment. RESULTS: We find a significant effect of familiarity and setting but not of age or musical training on recognition performance as measured by d'. More specifically, performance is best for the familiar, tonal piece, moderate for the unfamiliar tonal piece and worst for the unfamiliar atonal piece. Performance was better in the live setting than the lab setting. CONCLUSIONS: The absence of an age effect provides encouraging evidence that music's diverse cues may encourage cognitive scaffolding, in turn improving encoding and subsequent recognition. Better performance in an ecological versus lab setting supports the expansion of ecological studies in the field.

Day-to-day variability of stress biomarkers during a music intervention in people living with dementia and their family caregivers.

Examination of the variability of stress biomarkers among people living with dementia and their family caregivers can provide evidence of stress reactions and corresponding self-regulation capacities, but no such research has been conducted to date. The aim of this study was to examine day-to-day variability patterns of salivary biomarkers in dyads of people living with dementia and their family caregivers and to investigate differences in variability patterns between music intervention and control groups. This study involved secondary analysis of data collected during a two-group, non-randomized open trial examining the effects of an 8-week music intervention on physiological stress markers. A total of 5791 salivary samples from 34 dyads were used to analyze the variability of morning and evening cortisol and of morning dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S). The variability indices employed were the intra- and inter-individual standard deviation, coefficient of variation, and intra-class correlation coefficient. We found that family caregivers in the music intervention group had significantly greater coefficients of variation for all three biomarker endpoints than those in the control group. Our findings provide evidence that stress biomarkers in family caregivers with functional self-regulation capacities may be more likely to respond to music intervention. However, stress biomarkers in people living with dementia may not be responsive to music intervention, possibly due to their dysfunctional self-regulation capacities. Future stress biomarker studies involving dyads of people living with dementia and family caregivers should consider biomarker variability patterns in determining the effectiveness of behavioral interventions.

Misophonia reactions in the general population are correlated with strong emotional reactions to other everyday sensory-emotional experiences.

Misophonic experiences are common in the general population, and they may shed light on everyday emotional reactions to multi-modal stimuli. We performed an online study of a non-clinical sample to understand the extent to which adults who have misophonic reactions are generally reactive to a range of audio-visual emotion-inducing stimuli. We also hypothesized that musicality might be predictive of one's emotional reactions to these stimuli because music is an activity that involves strong connections between sensory processing and meaningful emotional experiences. Participants completed self-report scales of misophonia and musicality. They also watched videos meant to induce misophonia, autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and musical chills, and were asked to click a button whenever they had any emotional reaction to the video. They also rated the emotional valence and arousal of each video. Reactions to misophonia videos were predicted by reactions to ASMR and chills videos, which could indicate that the frequency with which individuals experience emotional responses varies similarly across both negative and positive emotional contexts. Musicality scores were not correlated with measures of misophonia. These findings could reflect a general phenotype of stronger emotional reactivity to meaningful sensory inputs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'.

Playing music together: Exploring the impact of a classical music ensemble on adolescent's life skills self-perception.

This paper explored the effectiveness of ensemble performance on the development of adolescent's life skills. An explorative qualitative study investigated young musicians' self-perception about the benefits and challenges of learning and playing music together. A convenience sampling technique was adopted for interviewing 15 adolescents (12-18 years old) who participated in a long-term music education programme led by a charity in the North-West of England. The data were analysed using NVivo, employing a thematic analysis approach. Two main themes emerged from the analyses: (1) the main benefits of playing and learning in an ensemble: the development of music and life skills; (2) the challenges experienced by the musicians learning in the ensemble. The findings suggest that participants were conscious of the positive effects of playing in an ensemble on their lives. This extended beyond merely learning a musical instrument, i.e. acquiring music skills. In particular, young musicians recognised they had developed greater self-confidence and cognitive skills such as critical thinking and self-awareness. Primarily, they developed effective communication and interpersonal skills. At the same time, these young musicians recognised they had to face challenges related to the process of learning music in an ensemble, such as managing emotions of frustration and adapting to different music learning styles and techniques. Finally, suggestions are made for the implementation and evaluation of future projects to explore the impact and effectiveness of classical music programmes, with a particular emphasis on ensemble-based initiatives and their influence on life skills.

Music-Making and Depression and Anxiety Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic-Results From the NAKO Cohort Study in Germany.

Objectives: To investigate the association of musical activity with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A total of 3,666 participants reported their musical activity before and mental health indicators before and during the pandemic. Depression was assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire, anxiety with the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale. The association between mental health scores and musical activities was investigated using linear regression. Results: Within the last 12 months, 22.1% of the participants reported musical activity (15.1% singing, 14.5% playing an instrument). Individuals with frequent singing as their main musical activity had higher scores before the pandemic than non-musicians and the worsening during the pandemic was more pronounced compared to non-musicians. Instrumentalists tended to have slightly lower scores than non-musicians indicating a possible beneficial effect of playing an instrument on mental health. Conclusion: The pandemic led to a worsening of mental health, with singers being particularly affected. Singers showed poorer mental health before the pandemic. The tendency for instrumentalists to report lower depression scores compared to non-musicians may support the hypothesis that music-making has a beneficial effect on health.

Heart rate-related physiological changes induced by classical music-elicited emotions do not underlie alterations in healthy adults' ankle joint target-matching strategy.

Emotions have the potential to modulate human voluntary movement by modifying muscle afferent discharge which in turn may affect kinesthetic acuity. We examined if heart rate (HR)-related physiological changes induced by music-elicited emotions would underlie alterations in healthy young adults' ankle joint target-matching strategy quantified by joint position sense (JPS). Participants (n = 40, 19 females, age = 25.9 ± 2.9 years) performed ipsilateral-, and contralateral ankle target-matching tasks with their dominant and non-dominant foot using a custom-made foot platform while listening to classical music pieces deemed to evoke happy, sad, or neutral emotions (each n = 10). Participants in the 4th group received no music during the task. Absolute (ABS), constant (CONST), and variable (VAR) target-matching errors and HR-related data were analyzed. Participants performed the contralateral target-matching task with smaller JPS errors when listening to sad vs. happy music (ABS: p < 0.001, d = 1.6; VAR: p = 0.010, d = 1.2) or neutral (ABS: p < 0.001, d = 1.6; VAR: p < 0.001, d = 1.4) music. The ABS (d = 0.8) and VAR (d = 0.3) JPS errors were lower when participants performed the task with their dominant vs. non-dominant foot. JPS errors were also smaller during the ipsilateral target-matching task when participants (1) listened to sad vs. neutral (ABS: p = 0.007, d = 1.2) music, and (2) performed the target-matching with their dominant vs. non-dominant foot (p < 0.001, d = 0.4). Although emotions also induced changes in some HR-related data during the matching conditions, i.e., participants who listened to happy music had lower HR-related values when matching with their non-dominant vs. dominant foot, these changes did not correlate with JPS errors (all p > 0.05). Overall, our results suggest that music-induced emotions have the potential to affect target-matching strategy and HR-related metrics but the changes in HR-metrics do not underlie the alteration of ankle joint target-matching strategy in response to classical music-elicited emotions.

Dissonant music engages early visual processing.

The neuroscientific examination of music processing in audio-visual contexts offers a valuable framework to assess how auditory information influences the emotional encoding of visual information. Using fMRI during naturalistic film viewing, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the effect of music on valence inferences during mental state attribution. Thirty-eight participants watched the same short-film accompanied by systematically controlled consonant or dissonant music. Subjects were instructed to think about the main character's intentions. The results revealed that increasing levels of dissonance led to more negatively valenced inferences, displaying the profound emotional impact of musical dissonance. Crucially, at the neuroscientific level and despite music being the sole manipulation, dissonance evoked the response of the primary visual cortex (V1). Functional/effective connectivity analysis showed a stronger coupling between the auditory ventral stream (AVS) and V1 in response to tonal dissonance and demonstrated the modulation of early visual processing via top-down feedback inputs from the AVS to V1. These V1 signal changes indicate the influence of high-level contextual representations associated with tonal dissonance on early visual cortices, serving to facilitate the emotional interpretation of visual information. Our results highlight the significance of employing systematically controlled music, which can isolate emotional valence from the arousal dimension, to elucidate the brain's sound-to-meaning interface and its distributive crossmodal effects on early visual encoding during naturalistic film viewing.

Physiological audience synchrony in classical concerts linked with listeners' experiences and attitudes.

A series of eleven public concerts (staging chamber music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean, Johannes Brahms) was organized with the goal to analyze physiological synchronies within the audiences and associations of synchrony with psychological variables. We hypothesized that the music would induce synchronized physiology, which would be linked to participants' aesthetic experiences, affect, and personality traits. Physiological measures (cardiac, electrodermal, respiration) of 695 participants were recorded during presentations. Before and after concerts, questionnaires provided self-report scales and standardized measures of participants' affectivity, personality traits, aesthetic experiences and listening modes. Synchrony was computed by a cross-correlational algorithm to obtain, for each participant and physiological variable (heart rate, heart-rate variability, respiration rate, respiration, skin-conductance response), how much each individual participant contributed to overall audience synchrony. In hierarchical models, such synchrony contribution was used as the dependent and the various self-report scales as predictor variables. We found that physiology throughout audiences was significantly synchronized, as expected with the exception of breathing behavior. There were links between synchrony and affectivity. Personality moderated the synchrony levels: Openness was positively associated, Extraversion and Neuroticism negatively. Several factors of experiences and listening modes predicted synchrony. Emotional listening was associated with reduced, whereas both structual and sound-focused listening was associated with increased synchrony. We concluded with an updated, nuanced understanding of synchrony on the timescale of whole concerts, inviting elaboration by synchony studies on shorter timescales of music passages.

Prosodic discrimination skills mediate the association between musical aptitude and vocal emotion recognition ability.

The current study tested the hypothesis that the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition skills is mediated by accuracy in prosody perception. Furthermore, it was investigated whether this association is primarily related to musical expertise, operationalized by long-term engagement in musical activities, or musical aptitude, operationalized by a test of musical perceptual ability. To this end, we conducted three studies: In Study 1 (N = 85) and Study 2 (N = 93), we developed and validated a new instrument for the assessment of prosodic discrimination ability. In Study 3 (N = 136), we examined whether the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition was mediated by prosodic discrimination ability. We found evidence for a full mediation, though only in relation to musical aptitude and not in relation to musical expertise. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals with high musical aptitude have superior prosody perception skills, which in turn contribute to their vocal emotion recognition skills. Importantly, our results suggest that these benefits are not unique to musicians, but extend to non-musicians with high musical aptitude.

Sensorimotor Impairment in Aging and Neurocognitive Disorders: Beat Synchronization and Adaptation to Tempo Changes.

Background: Understanding the nature and extent of sensorimotor decline in aging individuals and those with neurocognitive disorders (NCD), such as Alzheimer's disease, is essential for designing effective music-based interventions. Our understanding of rhythmic functions remains incomplete, particularly in how aging and NCD affect sensorimotor synchronization and adaptation to tempo changes. Objective: This study aimed to investigate how aging and NCD severity impact tapping to metronomes and music, with and without tempo changes. Methods: Patients from a memory clinic participated in a tapping task, synchronizing with metronomic and musical sequences, some of which contained sudden tempo changes. After exclusions, 51 patients were included in the final analysis. Results: Participants' Mini-Mental State Examination scores were associated with tapping consistency. Additionally, age negatively influenced consistency when synchronizing with a musical beat, whereas consistency remained stable across age when tapping with a metronome. Conclusions: The results indicate that the initial decline of attention and working memory with age may impact perception and synchronization to a musical beat, whereas progressive NCD-related cognitive decline results in more widespread sensorimotor decline, affecting tapping irrespective of audio type. These findings underline the importance of customizing rhythm-based interventions to the needs of older adults and individuals with NCD, taking into consideration their cognitive as well as their rhythmic aptitudes.

Therapeutic potential of twenty-first century music for cancer survivorship: from music and conceptual metaphor perspectives to a synergetic effect approach.

This paper examines the therapeutic potential of twenty-first century music as a means of supplementary therapeutic care for cancer survivorship. It presents a study of songs by Rihanna, Beyoncé, Adele, Coldplay, and Imagine Dragons, which combines the analysis of relevant music features and conceptual metaphors in the lyrics to examine the effect of the songs on the audience. The main aim of this study was to highlight the emotional and cognitive impact of these songs on listeners and identify their potential role in improving the psychological condition of patients with cancer who are downtrodden or reeling from the pain of surgery, chemotherapy, and side effects of treatment. This article adopts the conceptual metaphorical framework proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and the metaphor identification procedure (MIP) (Pragglejazz group, 2007) to examine the targeted use of metaphors features in the lyrics of the selected songs. The findings show that although there is a therapeutic potential associated with the songs analyzed, there are also potential risks for patients with cancer. "".

The effect of music on stress recovery.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research has suggested beneficial effects of music in reducing stress levels. However, there is no consistent conclusion demonstrating that music can contribute to stress recovery, primarily due to limitations in stress measurement, and inconsistent methodology within existing studies. Our study explores whether relaxing music, especially when self-selected, outperforms non-music acoustic, and silence conditions, fostering both subjective and biological stress recovery. METHODS: One hundred and five healthy female participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) before being randomly allocated to one of four conditions: condition 1 (n = 25) listened to researcher-selected relaxing music; condition 2 (n = 27) listened to self-selected relaxing music; condition 3 (n = 26) listened to the sound of rippling water; and condition 4 (n = 27) remained in silence. Stress parameters were repeatedly measured nine times before and after the TSST. Saliva samples were collected for cortisol and saliva alpha-amylase (sAA) analysis, Movisens equipment was used to measure heart rate (HR) and skin conductance levels (SCL), and Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) were used for subjective stress measurement. RESULTS: The examination of SCL, and VAS scores revealed no significant changes following the four relaxation interventions. Although sAA displayed a significant main effect of condition, post hoc tests did not pinpoint specific differences. HR recovery patterns varied among the four relaxation interventions, with the sound of rippling water condition exhibiting a later significant decrease compared to the other conditions. Exploratory analyses revealed that cortisol levels continued increase in all conditions during intervention phase except the researcher-selected music condition. CONCLUSIONS: The subjective and biological stress markers did not exhibit better recovery after the music stimulus, except for a tendency in the researcher-selected music condition to mitigate the continued increase in cortisol levels after the stress test. Our study provides the first evidence comparing the impact of researcher- and participant-selected music with silence and a non-music acoustic stimulus, on both subjective and biological stress recovery. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the impact of music on stress recovery.

Long-term music instruction is partially associated with the development of socioemotional skills.

This study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional skills in children who received formal music instruction and other non-music based after school programs. Eighty-three children, averaging 6.81 years old at baseline, were enrolled in either a music, sports, or no after-school program and followed over four years. The music program involved formal and systematic instruction in music theory, instrumental technique, and performance. Most control participants had no music education; however, in some instances, participants received minimal music education at school or at church. Musical development was measured using a pitch-matching and drumming-based rhythmic entrainment task. Sharing behavior was measured using a variation of the dictator game, and empathy was assessed using three different assessments: the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescence (trait empathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (theory of mind), and a Fiction Emotion-Matching task (state empathy). Results revealed no time-related associations in pitch-matching ability; however, formal music instruction improved pitch-matching relative to controls. On the contrary, improvements in rhythmic entrainment were best explained by age-related changes rather than music instruction. This study also found limited support for a positive association between formal music instruction and socioemotional skills. That is, individuals with formal music instruction exhibited improved emotion-matching relative to those with sports training. In terms of general socioemotional development, children's trait-level affective empathy did not improve over time, while sharing, theory of mind, and state empathy did. Additionally, pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment did not reliably predict any socioemotional measures, with associations being trivial to small. While formal music instruction benefitted pitch-matching ability and emotion-matching to an audiovisual stimulus, it was not a significant predictor of rhythmic entrainment or broader socioemotional development. These findings suggest that the transfer of music training may be most evident in near or similar domains.

Isochrony as ancestral condition to call and song in a primate.

Animal songs differ from calls in function and structure, and have comparative and translational value, showing similarities to human music. Rhythm in music is often distributed in quantized classes of intervals known as rhythmic categories. These classes have been found in the songs of a few nonhuman species but never in their calls. Are rhythmic categories song-specific, as in human music, or can they transcend the song-call boundary? We analyze the vocal displays of one of the few mammals producing both songs and call sequences: Indri indri. We test whether rhythmic categories (a) are conserved across songs produced in different contexts, (b) exist in call sequences, and (c) differ between songs and call sequences. We show that rhythmic categories occur across vocal displays. Vocalization type and function modulate deployment of categories. We find isochrony (1:1 ratio, like the rhythm of a ticking clock) in all song types, but only advertisement songs show three rhythmic categories (1:1, 1:2, 2:1 ratios). Like songs, some call types are also isochronous. Isochrony is the backbone of most indri vocalizations, unlike human speech, where it is rare. In indri, isochrony underlies both songs and hierarchy-less call sequences and might be ancestral to both.

The Power of Music and Inclusivity at the Bedside.

Using person-centered care in music therapy interventions.