Abstract
This study examined the effects of tonal and atonal music on respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in 40 mothers and their 3-month-old infants. The tonal music fragment was composed using the structure of a harmonic series that corresponds with the pitch ratio characteristics of mother–infant vocal dialogues. The atonal fragment did not correspond with a tonal structure. Mother–infant ECG and respiration were registered along with simultaneous video recordings. RR-interval, respiration rate, and RSA were calculated. RSA was corrected for any confounding respiratory and motor activities. The results showed that the infants’ and the mothers’ RSA-responses to the tonal and atonal music differed. The infants showed significantly higher RSA-levels during the tonal fragment than during the atonal fragment and baseline, suggesting increased vagal activity during tonal music. The mothers showed RSA-responses that were equal to their infants only when the infants were lying close to their bodies and when they heard the difference between the two fragments, preferring the tonal above the atonal fragment. The results are discussed with regard to music-related topics, psychophysiological integration and mother-infant vocal interaction processes.
Highlights
Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, there has been debate regarding whether the preference for consonance over dissonance has cultural or biological origins
We examined the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)-responses of 40 mothers and infants to a tonal and an atonal music fragment
The present study examined the effects of two music fragments on the RSA-responses of 40 mothers and their 3-month-old infants
Summary
Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, there has been debate regarding whether the preference for consonance over dissonance has cultural or biological origins. In studies of central nervous system activity, listening to dissonant music has been associated with heightened activity in areas of the brain that are known to be involved in stress responses [2,4,6,7]. Listeners show increased activity in the amygdala, hippocampus [4] and parahippocampal gyrus [2,8] during dissonant music and decreased activity in these regions during joyful consonant music [4]. It has been suggested that the parahippocampal gyrus might be involved in the processing of affective vocal signals [6]. In the amygdala, it seems that different nuclei are involved in the responses to consonance and dissonance [6]. Pallesen et al [7] stated that neural responses can be evoked even with isolated chords and that such responses do not differ between musicians and nonmusicians
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