Abstract
Although brain imaging studies have demonstrated that listening to music alters human brain structure and function, the molecular mechanisms mediating those effects remain unknown. With the advent of genomics and bioinformatics approaches, these effects of music can now be studied in a more detailed fashion. To verify whether listening to classical music has any effect on human transcriptome, we performed genome-wide transcriptional profiling from the peripheral blood of participants after listening to classical music (n = 48), and after a control study without music exposure (n = 15). As musical experience is known to influence the responses to music, we compared the transcriptional responses of musically experienced and inexperienced participants separately with those of the controls. Comparisons were made based on two subphenotypes of musical experience: musical aptitude and music education. In musically experiencd participants, we observed the differential expression of 45 genes (27 up- and 18 down-regulated) and 97 genes (75 up- and 22 down-regulated) respectively based on subphenotype comparisons (rank product non-parametric statistics, pfp 0.05, >1.2-fold change over time across conditions). Gene ontological overrepresentation analysis (hypergeometric test, FDR < 0.05) revealed that the up-regulated genes are primarily known to be involved in the secretion and transport of dopamine, neuron projection, protein sumoylation, long-term potentiation and dephosphorylation. Down-regulated genes are known to be involved in ATP synthase-coupled proton transport, cytolysis, and positive regulation of caspase, peptidase and endopeptidase activities. One of the most up-regulated genes, alpha-synuclein (SNCA), is located in the best linkage region of musical aptitude on chromosome 4q22.1 and is regulated by GATA2, which is known to be associated with musical aptitude. Several genes reported to regulate song perception and production in songbirds displayed altered activities, suggesting a possible evolutionary conservation of sound perception between species. We observed no significant findings in musically inexperienced participants.
Highlights
Listening to music is common in all societies
Functional annotation Based on gene ontology analyses (Table S3), the genes up-regulated in the listeners of edu classes 3–4 are known to be primarily involved in the regulation, secretion and transport of the neurotransmitter dopamine (e.g., SNCA, RTN4, and SLC6A8), protein sumoylation (SUMO2 and HDAC4) and neuron projection (SNCA, RTN4, DICER1 and MYC)
The findings of this study suggest that listening to classical music has an effect on human transcriptome
Summary
A plethora of neurophysiological studies have demonstrated that listening to and/or playing music has multiple measurable effects on human brain structure and function (Elbert et al, 1995; Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Sutoo & Akiyama, 2004; Koelsch, 2011; Salimpoor et al, 2011; Salimpoor et al, 2013; Herholz & Zatorre, 2012; Chanda & Levitin, 2013). We have utilized a combination of genomic and bioinformatic methods to analyze the effect of classical music on the peripheral whole blood transcriptome. Peripheral blood was used, as brain samples are inaccessible in humans
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