Music is a big part in some people’s lives, but does it affect us in any way? The question that this experiment is going to answer is simple. Does music affect mood and heart rate?
Introduction
Music has been used as a form of therapy for centuries. It’s been used to improve mood, restore energy, and help the body heal more naturally (“healthline.com”). It can also be used as rehabilitative medicine because of its calming effects (“abcnews.go”). Electrocardiograms, a record of someone’s heartbeat using electrocardiography, and skin monitors showed that a rise in volume had stimulating effects while a decrease had relaxing effects. Music with quicker tempos had stimulating effects as well, such as a rise in heart rate, blood pressure,
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Sleep is another thing that music helps with, as well as memorizing something. Memorizing is easier when it’s set to a tune (“healthychildren.org”) This experiment will attempt to find out if music does affect the body. The general hypothesis is that louder and quicker songs will cause heart rate to rise and to lift your mood while the opposite will happen with quieter and slower music.
Methods The materials used in this experiment are simple and relatively easy to come across. All that is needed is a device that plays music, a pencil, paper, and a speaker; headphones are an optional choice. However many trials that will happen depends on however many people are taking place in the experiment. Anywhere from five to fifteen trials with ten songs played during each trial should be enough. These methods were chosen because they seemed best fit. The test subjects record their heart rates before and after they listen to the song and then say how they felt after hearing it. Conducting the experiment isn’t a difficult task, it holds no risk for anyone included and all someone needs is the materials, participants, and a relatively calm environment free from
Also in their observations, the researchers reflected on the known medical benefits of music. They cited how music has been tested and shown to reduce anxiety and its
Music has been around for thousands of years; it can be used for entertainment, teaching, or healing and coping. One reason people today listen to music is to help get them through rough times. The structural composition of music can influence a person’s thoughts and mood simply through the right chord progression. It has now become an acceptable modality for certain psychological and medicinal mechanisms. Music has recently developed into a therapeutic mechanism for situations stretching from autistic people to the average person struggling with heart break or simply just focusing.
On mindblowingfacts.org it states that different speeds of music can alter your heart rate as well as decreaseing your muscle tension. While I was doing my research I found many other examples of how music can affect yourself. Music can affect your stress level, happiness, or your look on life. Music is a very important thing in people’s life. It can calm people down, or make people happy, so it also affects our attitude and mood.
Music has many affects on the brain. Music is known to reduce anxiety. Many people use music as an outlet for stress. Also, music has the capability to change a person’s mood. Typically, when people listen to happy music they are put into a better mood. Music therapists use this strategy
results indicate that the hypothesis was supported but only for relaxation music and not arousal music, after listening to arousal music heart rate decreased by .4. it shows that participants who listened to relaxation music heart rate was lower before and after than compared to those who listened to arousal music. The average heart-beats per minute prior to the investigation was 77.4 for arousal music and after was recorded to be 77 beats per minute, while the relaxation music was 73.3 before and after was 73. Evidently, results for both trials were not significant enough to affect the results.
As you can see form Chart B, we calculated percent change between the different types of music. When our subjects listened to heavy-metal music, their heart rates increased on average. When our subjects listened to classical music, their heart rates decreased on average, below resting heart rate. Our tables do not show the negative side of the spectrum, but still show the percent change in heart rate, which is what we were trying to accomplish. Due to classical music actually lowering heart rate, our hypothesis was not proven complete. Relate back to our hypothesis. We hypothesized that fast tempo music would increase heart rates while slower paced music will keep heart rate at about the same. Still, if you relate back to the table and Chart A, we have still conducted positive evidence to prove that music does play a role in a change of heart rates. Each subject did experience a change in heart rate, both positive and negative. This experiment does relate back to the original real-world issue of heart rate. Being able to understand how to control heart rate is very important. If someone has heart problems or an irregular heart beat they need to be aware of certain music that could potentially be harmful to them. Like-wise, if someone were trying to be in a good mood or simply be hyper, they would enjoy listening to high
In this lab, we tested the effect of different music genres on our subjects’ heart rates. We believed that faster, more intense music would energize the subjects, thus causing their heart rate to rise, whereas slow, calming music would relax our subjects, causing their heart rates to slow. The four genres of music we tested (our independent variable) were hard rock, fast classical, slow and quiet songs, and two songs they
Low, soothing music, such as jazz or reggae, uplifts a depressive mood and calms the heart rate. Derived from this scientific trial, “Entrainment causes [the] body to sync with the
Music appears to be processed in the right hemisphere of the brain. The way we experience music also affects our nervous system. There are different neurons that respond according to what kind of music is playing. Music can effect hormones, encourage the production of cortisol, testosterone, and oxytocin. Music can even trigger a release of endorphins. Beyond the biology and the actual responses of your body, there are definite responses of the mind as well. There are different components to music that can have an effect. Pitch, harmony, frequency, melody, and rhythm all affect the brain in different ways. We know that some of the brain locations are involved in helping to heal and soothe the body as well. The brain can be taught and stimulated to perform better — and it seems that music is the perfect vehicle to do
They believed that numerous studies mentioned suffered methodological shortcomings. Their first recommendation was to accurate characterization of music because music can be perceived differently by different people. Second, use different sets of music prepared by the experimenter so the participants can choose because music stimuli of different sets will be well matched so there is a high likelihood that the music as positive valence for the participants. Third, it's important to assess musical preferences for the intended listening situation. Fourth, clinical studies should include control groups to avoid the placebo effect. Last, they recommend that clinical studies include psychologically relevant outcome variable such as mood, anxiety, pain and economically relevant outcome variables. In result, we can conclude that exciting music and musical fission increases heart rate, respiratory rate compared to tranquilizing music. Also, music can affect regional heart activity and can be used in clinical settings to reduce pain, anxiety, blood pressure, and depression. Lastly, the authors talked about wanting more pressing for high-quality systematic research on the effects of music on the heart in both healthy individuals and
Have you ever walked into a room when there was music playing while you were in a bad mood or an emotional frame of mind, only to find yourself humming or singing along to the music that was playing? Music affects the way we feel, and it can alter the current state of our emotional well-being just by listening to it. Often, in everyday life, people overlook the importance that sounds make in our lives. With all of the issues and tasks that an individual tries to complete during their busy day, it’s no wonder that we often do not take the time to examine something as simple as the sounds that surround us and penetrate our minds, or the affect in which these sounds have on our current emotional state of mind. Music has a peculiar effect on the human mind. Tonal qualities by themselves do not create any extreme mental activity, yet when we combine them together into music, it may create flashbacks of strong memories, making a person feel happy, sad, nostalgic, exited or even angry.
Music is used to Michael Thaut of Colorado State University said, “Music is hard-wired into the brain. We’re only now realizing how important it is to us”(Wendel). In his studies, he found scientists thought music had little or nothing to do with important matters of the brain or your body. In recent years, he has seen views change, but many physicians are still questioning whether music can really be an alternative to medicine. Now, “Doctors believe music therapy… not only makes people feel better, but also makes them heal faster”(SOURCE). Psychologists have found great improvements with patients they are treating with music therapy. It makes the patient feel better and heal faster. Doctors are also seeing, “We’re only beginning to understand the value of music,” according to Deforia Lane, a music therapist at University Hospital in Cleveland. Finally music is used to comfort people at hard times in their lives. After September 11th, 2001, musicians of all kinds took part in performances on television and other settings. The reliance on music helped the nation deal with the tragedy. Even opera singer Denyce Graves said, “It’s soothing, comforting and reminds us that there’s still beauty in the world.” Music speaks to us what cannot be expressed in our day to day lives. Many music therapy patients see music as a magical healing tool while others just listen to music, but no matter what we are doing with
Ellis, R.J. “Physical Effects of Music.” Music & Letters 39, no. 3 (July 1958): 323-324.
Many people say that listening to music is beneficial to improving memory and ability to solve problems quicker. Pleasant music boosts serotonin levels, a chemical in the brain that regulates relaxation. Neuroscientists proved that music makes most areas of the brain process information in intricate and interrelated sequences. One of these areas is the hippocampus, which handles long term memory storage. It also stimulates the corpus callosum, the bridge between the two halves of the brain, allowing massages to be sent quicker therefore solving problems quicker. Although, loud music can reduce a person’s reaction time by up to 20%.
All music components of music - Tempo, pitch, volume, and rhythm - affect our body. Tempo is defined as the pace of the music. Tempos in the range of 60 - 70 beats per minute have been found to be most soothing, because they reflect the similar tempo of the heart. A pace faster than that causes tension, while a pace slower than that creates the feeling of suspense. The pitch or highness or lowness of a sound is determined by the frequency of sound waves and it acts on the autonomic nervous system. A high pitch causes tension, while a low pitch promotes relaxation. The volume, or intensity/loudness of the music, can cause pain if very high, yet can be soothing and relaxing if low. Rhythm helps the body to regain the order that it had previous to the stress caused by the medical illness or condition. Specifically, music assists in restoring the circadian rhythms of temperature and sleep, the ultradian rhythms of autonomic system regulation, metabolic processes, and cerebral dominance, and the rhythms of respiration, peristalsis, and heart rate. In addition, for infants born premature or ill, music helps to recreate the order of the fetal environment experienced in utero, and promotes a low