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 Emotion-to-Music Mapping Atlas (EMMA): A systematically organized online database of emotionally evocative music excerpts.

Selecting appropriate musical stimuli to induce specific emotions represents a recurring challenge in music and emotion research. Most existing stimuli have been categorized according to taxonomies derived from general emotion models (e.g., basic emotions, affective circumplex), have been rated for perceived emotions, and are rarely defined in terms of interrater agreement. To redress these limitations, we present research that served in the development of a new interactive online database, including an initial set of 364 music excerpts from three different genres (classical, pop, and hip/hop) that were rated for felt emotion using the Geneva Emotion Music Scale (GEMS), a music-specific emotion scale. The sample comprised 517 English- and German-speaking participants and each excerpt was rated by an average of 28.76 participants (SD = 7.99). Data analyses focused on research questions that are of particular relevance for musical database development, notably the number of raters required to obtain stable estimates of emotional effects of music and the adequacy of the GEMS as a tool for describing music-evoked emotions across three prominent music genres. Overall, our findings suggest that 10-20 raters are sufficient to obtain stable estimates of emotional effects of music excerpts in most cases, and that the GEMS shows promise as a valid and comprehensive annotation tool for music databases.

Gender Differences in Short-term Memory Related to Music Genres.

The purpose of the present research was to examine whether different music settings could influence one's cognitive function - particularly memory. The examined sample consisted of 168 college students with a male:female ratio of 1:2.2. The participants were asked to complete a short-term memory test regarding word recollection while exposed to auditory stimuli. They were divided into three groups, each experiencing very different auditory stimuli (classical music; heavy metal music; no music). The results indicated that gender (as a single parameter) played a significant role in the recall process, with female subjects achieving significantly higher scores than males (p-value = 0.006). Music as an external stimulus was also found to affect the recall process significantly (0.02 < p < 0.04). Gender did not present any statistically significant association with specific music genres although, based on the limitations of this study, findings are in need of further exploration. The results of the present study may direct forthcoming research to address this issue further by examining additional variables as well.

The Effect of Rap/Hip-Hop Music on Young Adult Smoking: An Experimental Study.

BACKGROUND: Music may influence young people's behavior through its lyrics. Substance use references occur more frequently in rap/hip-hop than in other music genres. OBJECTIVES: The aim was to examine whether the exposure to rap/hip-hop lyrics referring to substance use affected cigarette smoking. METHODS: An experiment with a 3-group between subject design was conducted among 74 daily-smoking young adults ranging in age from 17 to 25 years old. Three conditions were tested in a mobile lab (camper vehicle) from May to December 2011, i.e., regular chart pop music (N = 28), rap/hip-hop with non-frequent references to substance use (N = 24), and rap/hip-hop with frequent references to substance use (N = 22). RESULTS: One-way ANOVA showed that participants listening to substance use infused rap/hip-hop songs felt significantly less pleasant, liked the songs less, and comprehended the songs less compared to participants listening to pop songs. Poisson loglinear analyses revealed that compared to the pop music condition, none of the two rap/hip-hop music conditions had a significant effect on acute smoking. Thus, contrary to expectations, the two different rap/hip-hop conditions did not have a significantly different effect on acute smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Listening to rap/hip-hop, even rap hip/hop with frequent referrals to substance use (primarily alcohol and drug use, and general smoking referrals), does not seem to encourage cigarette smoking among Dutch daily-smoking young adults, at least short term.