Psychophysiological effects of synchronous versus asynchronous music during cycling

"This is a non-final version of an article published in final form in (https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2014&issue=02000&article=00024&type=abstract )"Purpose: Synchronizing movement to a musical beat may reduce the metabolic cost of exercise, but findings to date have been equivocal. Our aim was to examine the degree to which the synchronous application of music moderates the metabolic demands of a cycle ergometer task. Methods: Twenty-three recreationally active men made two laboratory visits. During the first visit, participants completed a maximal incremental ramp test on a cycle ergometer. At the second visit, they completed four randomized 6-min cycling bouts at 90% of ventilatory threshold (control, metronome, synchronous music, and asynchronous music). Main outcome variables were oxygen uptake, HR, ratings of dyspnea and limb discomfort, affective valence, and arousal. Results: No significant differences were evident for oxygen uptake. HR was lower under the metronome condition (122 T 15 bpm) compared to asynchronous music (124 T 17 bpm) and control (125 T 16 bpm). Limb discomfort was lower while listening to the metronome (2.5 T 1.2) and synchronous music (2.3 T 1.1) compared to control (3.0 T 1.5). Both music conditions, synchronous (1.9 T 1.2) and asynchronous (2.1 T 1.3), elicited more positive affective valence compared to metronome (1.2 T 1.4) and control (1.2 T 1.2), while arousal was higher with synchronous music (3.4 T 0.9) compared to metronome (2.8 T 1.0) and control (2.8 T 0.9). Conclusions: Synchronizing movement to a rhythmic stimulus does not reduce metabolic cost but may lower limb discomfort. Moreover, synchronous music has a stronger effect on limb discomfort and arousal when compared to asynchronous music

Neurophysiological and Behavioral Responses to Music Therapy in Vegetative and Minimally Conscious States

Assessment of awareness for those with disorders of consciousness is a challenging undertaking, due to the complex presentation of the population. Debate surrounds whether behavioral assessments provide greatest accuracy in diagnosis compared to neuro-imaging methods, and despite developments in both, misdiagnosis rates remain high. Music therapy may be effective in the assessment and rehabilitation with this population due to effects of musical stimuli on arousal, attention, and emotion, irrespective of verbal or motor deficits. However, an evidence base is lacking as to which procedures are most effective. To address this, a neurophysiological and behavioral study was undertaken comparing electroencephalogram (EEG), heart rate variability, respiration, and behavioral responses of 20 healthy subjects with 21 individuals in vegetative or minimally conscious states (VS or MCS). Subjects were presented with live preferred music and improvised music entrained to respiration (procedures typically used in music therapy), recordings of disliked music, white noise, and silence. ANOVA tests indicated a range of significant responses (p ? 0.05) across healthy subjects corresponding to arousal and attention in response to preferred music including concurrent increases in respiration rate with globally enhanced EEG power spectra responses (p = 0.05–0.0001) across frequency bandwidths. Whilst physiological responses were heterogeneous across patient cohorts, significant post hoc EEG amplitude increases for stimuli associated with preferred music were found for frontal midline theta in six VS and four MCS subjects, and frontal alpha in three VS and four MCS subjects (p = 0.05–0.0001). Furthermore, behavioral data showed a significantly increased blink rate for preferred music (p = 0.029) within the VS cohort. Two VS cases are presented with concurrent changes (p ? 0.05) across measures indicative of discriminatory responses to both music therapy procedures. A third MCS case study is presented highlighting how more sensitive selective attention may distinguish MCS from VS. The findings suggest that further investigation is warranted to explore the use of music therapy for prognostic indicators, and its potential to support neuroplasticity in rehabilitation programs

The Impact of Mindfulness On Balance, Cognition and Arousal

The control group study investigated the impact of a mindfulness centering technique, taken from the Japanese martial art Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, on balance and reaction time performance as well as on concurrent levels of galvanic skin response (arousal). Study design and analysis occurred within a social neuroscience framework that included the cultural view of mind, body, and emotion as an integrated whole, and brain research from multiple disciplines revealing the neural integrated organism. Thirty-one subjects were tested in a visual-stimulus reaction time task and in an unstable rocker-board balancing task. Prior to repeating the tests, experimental group participants learned the centering technique and control group participants received a brief lecture. Significant improvement for the experimental group over the control group was limited to one balance measure. Results in general indicated a possible trend to improved balance performance with centering. Arousal level correlated significantly with performance and task type for the entire sample. In light of ongoing neuroscience research, the study\u27s findings point to the value of approaching clinical studies of performance from an integrated organism perspective

Computational physics of the mind

In the XIX century and earlier such physicists as Newton, Mayer, Hooke, Helmholtz and Mach were actively engaged in the research on psychophysics, trying to relate psychological sensations to intensities of physical stimuli. Computational physics allows to simulate complex neural processes giving a chance to answer not only the original psychophysical questions but also to create models of mind. In this paper several approaches relevant to modeling of mind are outlined. Since direct modeling of the brain functions is rather limited due to the complexity of such models a number of approximations is introduced. The path from the brain, or computational neurosciences, to the mind, or cognitive sciences, is sketched, with emphasis on higher cognitive functions such as memory and consciousness. No fundamental problems in understanding of the mind seem to arise. From computational point of view realistic models require massively parallel architectures

The functional role of dreaming in emotional processes

Dream experience (DE) represents a fascinating condition linked to emotional processes and the human inner world. Although the overlap between REM sleep and dreaming has been overcome, several studies point out that emotional and perceptually vivid contents are more frequent when reported upon awakenings from this sleep stage. Actually, it is well-known that REM sleep plays a pivotal role in the processing of salient and emotional waking-life experiences, strongly contributing to the emotional memory consolidation. In this vein, we highlighted that, to some extent, neuroimaging studies showed that the processes that regulate dreaming and emotional salience in sleep mentation share similar neural substrates of those controlling emotions during wakefulness. Furthermore, the research on EEG correlates of the presence/absence of DE and the results on EEG pattern related to the incorporated memories converged to assign a crucial role of REM theta oscillations in emotional re-processing. In particular, the theta activity is involved in memory processes during REM sleep as well as during the waking state, in line with the continuity hypothesis. Also, the gamma activity seems to be related to emotional processes and dream recall as well as to lucid dreams. Interestingly, similar EEG correlates of DE have been found in clinical samples when nightmares or dreams occur. Research on clinical samples revealed that promoting the rehearsal of frightening contents aimed to change them is a promising method to treat nightmares, and that lucid dreams are associated with an attenuation of nightmares. In this view, DE can defuse emotional traumatic memories when the emotional regulation and the fear extinction mechanisms are compromised by traumatic and frightening events. Finally, dreams could represent a sort of simulation of reality, providing the possibility to create a new scenario with emotional mastery elements to cope with dysphoric items included in nightmares. In addition, it could be hypothesized that the insertion of bizarre items besides traumatic memories might be functional to “impoverish” the negative charge of the experiences