Melody modulates choir members' heart rate

2013-07-09

(Press-News.org) When people sing in a choir their heart beats are synchronised, so that the pulse of choir members tends to increase and decrease in unison. This has been shown by a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg that examined the health effects for choir members.

In the research project "Kroppens Partitur" (The Body's Musical Score), researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy are studying how music, in purely biological terms, affects our body and our health. The object is to find new forms where music may be used for medical purposes, primarily within rehabilitation and preventive care.

In the latest study, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the research group is able to show how the musical structure influences the heart rate of choir members.

In December 2012, Björn Vickhoff and his research group brought together fifteen 18-year-olds at Hvitfeltska High School in Gothenburg and arranged for them to perform three different choral exercises: monotone humming, singing the well-known Swedish hymn "Härlig är Jorden" (Lovely is the Earth) as well as the chanting of a slow mantra. The heart rhythm of the choir members was registered as they performed in each case.

The results from the study show that the music's melody and structure has a direct link is linked to the cardiac activity of the individual choir member; to sing in unison has a synchronising effect so that the heart rate of the singers tends to increase and decrease at the same time.

"Singing regulates activity in the so-called vagus nerve which is involved in our emotional life and our communication with others and which, for example, affects our vocal timbre. Songs with long phrases achieve the same effect as breathing exercises in yoga. In other words, through song we can exercise a certain control over mental states," explains Björn Vickhoff, lead author of the study.

Choral singing's positive effects on health and well-being are testified by many, although it has only been studied scientifically to a lesser extent. The researchers' hypothesis is that the health effects arise through singing "imposing" a calm and regular breathing pattern which has a dramatic effect on heart rate variability – something that, in its turn, is assumed to have a favourable effect on health.

"In the case of controlled breathing, the heart rate or pulse decreases when breathing out during exhalation in order to then increase again when breathing in during inhalation. This is due to breathing out Exhalation activates the vagus nerve that lowers the heart rate which slows down the heart. The medical term for this fluctuation in heart rate the connection between breathing and heart rate is RSA and it is more pronounced with young people in good physical condition and not subject to stress. Our hypothesis is that song is a form of regular, controlled breathing, since breathing out exhaling occurs on the song phrases and breathing in inhaling between these," says Björn Vickhoff.

"We already know that choral singing synchronises the singers' muscular movements and neural activities in large parts of the body. Now we also know that this applies to the heart, to a large extent."

The research group now wishes to investigate whether the biological synchronising of the choral singers also creates a shared mental perspective which could be used as a method for strengthening the ability to collaborate.

Wherever acting and singing in unison takes place there is a link Collective acting and singing is often an expression of a collective will, according to Björn Vickhoff. "One need only think of football stadiums, work songs, hymn singing at school, festival processions, religious choirs or military parades. Research shows that synchronised rites contribute to group solidarity. We are now considering testing choral singing as a means of strengthening working relationships in schools," he says.

###

Note to Editors

For online articles, please include a reference and link to the study, which will become available on this active link after the embargo lifts: http://www.frontiersin.org/Auditory_Cognitive_Neuroscience/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00334/abstract

A video of the researchers performing their experiment is available:

Windows Media, fast: mms://wms.it.gu.se/gutv/arkiv/MF13063a.asf

Windows Media, slow: mms://wms.it.gu.se/gutv/arkiv/MF13063b.asf

Real player: http://real.gu.se/gutv/arkiv/MF13063.ram

MPEG4: http://flash.gu.se/gutv/arkiv/MF13063_720.mp4

Title: Music determines heart rate variability of singers
Journal: Frontiers in Neuroscience
DOI: doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00334

Contacts

Björn Vickhoff
Researcher at the Centre for Brain Repair and Rehabilitation
Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg
bjorn.vickhoff@neuro.gu.se

Rickard Åström
Musician and Composer in Björn's research team
rickard@rickardastrom.com

Krister Svahn
Interim Head of Communications
Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
krister.svahn@sahlgrenska.gu.se

Gozde Zorlu
Communications Officer, Frontiers
gozde.zorlu@frontiersin.org

About Frontiers

Frontiers is a community driven open-access publisher and research networking platform. Launched and run by scientists since 2007, and based in Switzerland, Frontiers empowers researchers to advance the way science is evaluated, communicated and shared in the digital era. Frontiers joined the Nature Publishing Group family in 2013.

The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers around the world. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations such as the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org

About The Sahlgrenska Academy

The Sahlgrenska Academy is the faculty of health sciences at the University of Gothenburg. Education and research are conducted within the fields of pharmacy, medicine, odontology and health care sciences.

About 4,000 undergraduate students and 1,200 postgraduate students are enrolled at Sahlgrenska Academy. Around 1,400 people work at the Sahlgrenska Academy. 850 of them are researchers and/or teachers. 2009 Sahlgrenska Academy had a turnover of 2,100 million SEK. For more information, please visit: http://www.sahlgrenska.gu.se/english

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Penn study sheds light on why low-income patients prefer hospital care to a doctor's office

2013-07-09

Philadelphia -- Patients with low socioeconomic status use emergency and hospital care more often than primary care because they believe hospital care is more affordable and convenient, and of better quality than care provided by primary care physicians, according to the results of a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results of the study, appearing in the July issue of Health Affairs (and featured on its cover), have significant implications for policy initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act that seek ...

Denormalizing smoking: Making the case for banning cigarettes in parks and on beaches

2013-07-09

Many state and local governments have banned smoking in parks and on beaches on the basis that passive smoke is a risk for non-smokers, cigarette butts pollute the environment, and seeing people smoke poses a long-term risk to children. In the paper "Banning Smoking In Parks and on Beaches: Science, Policy, and the Politics of Denormalization," published in the July issue of the journal Health Affairs, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health analyzed the evidence for these claims and found them to be far from definitive and, in some cases, weak. ...

Irregular bed times curb young kids' brain power

2013-07-09

Given the importance of early childhood development on subsequent health, there may be knock-on effects across the life course, suggest the authors. The authors looked at whether bedtimes in early childhood were related to brain power in more than 11,000 seven year olds, all of whom were part of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). MCS is a nationally representative long term study of UK children born between September 2000 and January 2002, and the research drew on regular surveys and home visits made when the children were 3, 5, and 7, to find out about family routines, ...

Most babies born to mums on methadone exposed to several illicit drugs in womb

2013-07-09

While the results may not be representative of the UK as a whole, nevertheless, excess drinking and drug taking in pregnancy is a pairing that is likely to be more common than generally thought, say the authors. It is known that women prescribed maintenance methadone use other illicit drugs, but the extent to which they do this has never been quantified in the UK, nor are there any figures on the prevalence of drug and alcohol use during pregnancy for this group of women, they add. They interviewed 56 mums who were on methadone maintenance during their pregnancy and ...

Fears that pet ponies and donkeys traded for horsemeat in Britain unfounded

2013-07-09

Buyers want larger size animals to obtain the maximum meat yield, so go for thoroughbreds and riding horses, the study indicates. The researchers looked at the animals put up for sale at seven randomly selected auction markets in Britain in August and September 2011, and the type preferred by dealers buying on behalf of abattoirs. The auctions were in North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Wales (Powys), Berkshire and Cheshire and traded equines only, but of all types, breed and age. Their study was prompted by public concerns about the possible dispatch to slaughter of ...

'Scent device' could help detect bladder cancer

2013-07-09

Researchers from the University of Liverpool and University of the West of England, (UWE Bristol), have built a device that can read odours in urine to help diagnose patients with early signs of bladder cancer. There are currently no reliable biomarkers to screen patients for bladder cancer in the same way that there are for breast and cervical cancers. Previous research has suggested that a particular odour in the urine could be detected by dogs trained to recognise the scent, indicating that methods of diagnoses could be based on the smell of certain gases. The team ...

Finding the Goldilocks sites to store CO2 underground

2013-07-09

Carbon capture and storage has been heralded as a new technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In an effort to help slow climate change, human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) is captured at point-source emitters like power stations and sequestered in underground rocks. In porous rocks like sandstone, the CO2 is trapped in tiny spaces or pores, which act like a sponge and soak up the injected fluid. In 2000, one of the first commercial examples of this technology was conducted in Weyburn, Saskatchewan Province, Canada where approximately 3 megatonnes of CO2 (the ...

Older age associated with disability prior to death, women more at risk than men

2013-07-09

Persons who live to an older age are the more likely to be disabled near the end of life and require the assistance of a caregiver to complete the activities of daily living, and disability was more common in women than men two years before death, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The population of U.S. adults older than 85 years is expected to triple from 5.4 million to 19 million between 2008 and 2050. While many people do live into their eighth and ninth decades independently and free of disability, the end-of-life ...

Health-related website search information may be leaked to third-party tracking entities

2013-07-09

Patients who search on free health-related websites for information related to a medical condition may have the health information they provide leaked to third party tracking entities through code on those websites, according to a research letter by Marco D. Huesch, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Between December 2012 and January 2013, using a sample of 20 popular health-related websites, Huesch used freely available privacy tools to detect third parties. Commercial interception software also was used to intercept hidden traffic ...

Early, late first exposure to solid food appears associated with development of Type 1 diabetes

2013-07-09

Both an early and late first exposure to solid food for infants appears to be associated with the development of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), according to a study published by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. T1DM is increasing around the world with some of the most rapid increase among children younger than 5 years of age. The infant diet has been of particular interest in the origin of the disease, according to the study background. Brittni Frederiksen, M.P.H., Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, Aurora, and colleagues examined ...

World’s leading science competition identifies 19 breakthrough solutions around the globe with greatest potential to tackle the planetary crisis

Meta-analysis finds Transcendental Meditation reduces post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms across populations and cultures

AACR: Five MD Anderson researchers honored with 2025 Scientific Achievement Awards

How not to form a state: Research reveals how imbalanced social-ecological acceleration led to collapse in early medieval Europe

DDT residues persist in trout in some Canadian lakes 70 years after insecticide treatment, often at levels ten times that recommended as safe for the wildlife which consumes the fish

Melody modulates choir members' heart rate

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: