The Effects Of Listening To Music

Music has become an integral part of every human being during their day to day activities and it has immense effect on the body and mind. Everyone in this world loves music as it evokes particular emotional states and these emotional states are related to brain and autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. Listening to music activates a multitude of brain structures involved in cognitive, sensorimotor, and emotional processing. Music has the potential to induce strong emotions which are either positive or negative, and positive emotions can augment well-being this enhances the listeners’ mood and evoke pleasant feelings which pave a way to alleviate stress. Music that induces positive effect and enjoyment can improve the task performance.
Musical stimuli that are familiar to Indian inhabitants would yield a better task performance instead of using a controlled musical stimulus, as emotion is subjective. A pilot study was conducted on eight healthy participants to identify which type of music (carnatic, hard rock and jazz) enhances the cognitive skills and reduces the mental stress of an individual in listening of music by using electroencephalography(Eight healthy right handed subjects without special musical education participated in the study. EEG signal were recorded while listening music during cognitive task from three characteristic locations (FZ, PZ and CZ) on the cranium using surface electrodes. Signal were analyzed in frequency domain and seven feature were extracted from three brain rhythms (theta, alpha and beta) while listening to three different music. At Cz location the total power was significantly (p < 0.05) high in the Rock as compared to Jazz music and between Carnatic and Jazz, total power was significantly (p < 0.05) high for Carnatic when compared to Jazz. The study concludes, Jazz music reduces mental stress and increase attention during cognitive task as compare to Carnatic, hard
In current study the three dimensional emotional affective spaces the valence, arousal and dominance were considered. Fifty five subjects participated in the experiment (20 Males, 20 Females, and 15 Classical dancers). In this present study, a distinct attempt has been made by including the classical dancers among the group of participants. The perceived emotions are recorded in three dimensional spaces (valence, arousal, and dominance domain) for the Indian subjects using Self-Assessment Manikin Scale (SAM). The male perceived the pleasant pictures in valence space as pleased and in arousal space it was excited (rs =0.511) in dominance space as dependant (rs =0.301). while female (rs =0.405) and classical dancers (rs =0.551) perceived the pleasant pictures in valence space as pleasant and in arousal space it was excited, as well as in dominance space as dependant (rs =0.202) , (rs =0.210).The unpleasant pictures were rated as unpleasant by all in valance space whereas in arousal space female and male rated in arousal space rated as was dull (rs =0.222) and classical dancers as wide awake (rs =0.480).whereas female (rs =0.170) and classical dancers (rs =0.332) rated dependant in dominance space .The neutral