Abstract
Relaxation and excitation are components of the effects of music listening. The tempo of music is often considered a critical factor when determining these effects: listening to slow-tempo and fast-tempo music elicits relaxation and excitation, respectively. However, the chemical bases that underlie these relaxation and excitation effects remain unclear. Since parasympathetic and sympathetic nerve activities are facilitated by oxytocin and glucocorticoid, respectively, we hypothesized that listening to relaxing slow-tempo and exciting fast-tempo music is accompanied by increases in the oxytocin and cortisol levels, respectively. We evaluated the change in the salivary oxytocin and cortisol levels of participants listening to slow-tempo and fast-tempo music sequences. We measured the heart rate (HR) and calculated the heart rate variability (HRV) to evaluate the strength of autonomic nerve activity. After listening to a music sequence, the participants rated their arousal and valence levels. We found that both the salivary oxytocin concentration and the high frequency component of the HRV (HF) increased and the HR decreased when a slow-tempo music sequence was presented. The salivary cortisol level decreased and the low frequency of the HRV (LF) to HF ratio (LF/HF) increased when a fast-tempo music sequence was presented. The ratio of the change in the oxytocin level was correlated with the change in HF, LF/HF and HR, whereas that in the cortisol level did not show any correlation with indices of autonomic nerve activity. There was no correlation between the change in oxytocin level and self-reported emotions, while the change in cortisol level correlated with the arousal level. These findings suggest that listening to slow-tempo and fast-tempo music is accompanied by an increase in the oxytocin level and a decrease in the cortisol level, respectively, and imply that such music listening-related changes in oxytocin and cortisol are involved in physiological relaxation and emotional excitation, respectively.
Highlights
Music is an art common to all humankind that transcends national and cultural boundaries
A simple main effect test demonstrated that the salivary oxytocin level was significantly greater (F (1,44) = 13.64, p = 0.0007, n = 23 participants) than the baseline after the participants listened to the slow-tempo music sequence, while no significant change in the salivary cortisol level was observed (F (1,48) = 0.72, p = 0.40, n = 25 participants)
The salivary cortisol level was significantly lower (F (1,48) = 5.65, p = 0.022, n = 25 participants) than the baseline after the participants listened to the fast-tempo music sequence, while no significant change in the salivary oxytocin level was observed (F (1,44) = 0.032, p = 0.86, n = 23 participants)
Summary
Music is an art common to all humankind that transcends national and cultural boundaries. Listening to music can have a wide variety of effects on human beings such as causing changes in cardiovascular activity and inducing emotion [12,13,14], the key factors behind these effects have not been fully understood. Earlier studies demonstrated that listening to music with a fast tempo induces an increase in sympathetic nerve activity [15]. It can be assumed that cortisol is a candidate chemical basis of the excitation effect of music listening. It is fair to hypothesize that excitation induced by listening to music is based on the cortisol function. The present study compared the oxytocin and cortisol levels in saliva before and after listening to music with fast and slow tempi. Carter et al indicated that salivary oxytocin is a good biomarker with which to monitor central oxytocin function [26]
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