How Music Affects Our Moods
By Vishal Vaidya and Vamsi Gadiraju
Have you ever listened to the intense music from a horror movie, or the uplifting music at the end of a Disney Movie; music invokes powerful feelings in all of us, from a feeling of hope to adrenaline pumping through your veins, to deep sadness. When music is played, it plucks the spiral sheet of your inner ear, and fires neurons in the auditory cortex in the temporal lobes located above the ears. The firing of the brain cells gives us the experience of music, while different patterns give us different types of music and different feelings in us. These feelings can change from person to person based on past experiences and the thoughts in our brains.
In our experiment we hooked test subjects up to blood pressure cuff and and a heart rate monitor while making them listen to different types of music with headphones to see if there was any correlation between heart rate and blood pressure and the type of music being listened to. If people listen to faster, more intense music genres, like heavy metal and rap, then we presumed their heart rates and blood pressures would be higher; however, if they listen to classical music, it would be lower. We took 3 types of music with one song from each genre; War Pigs, a heavy metal song from Black Sabbath, I Need a Doctor, a rap song by Doc Dre and Eminem and the Moonlight Sonata, a classical piece by Beethoven. We had each of our four subjects listen to 60 seconds of a song and looked at the data created on Logger Pro on our laptops.
For the most part, our data came out as expected. As we said in the beginning, the feelings and changes would be different depending on the person, thus we mainly relied on averages to be more precise and accurate. Metal invoked a mean heart rate of 154.85 bpm, mean arterial rate of 107.5 mm HG, and a pulse of 70 bpm for the four test subjects. Rap showed a mean heart rate of 122.075 bpm, mean arterial rate of 91.75 mm HG, and a mean pulse of 78.25. Finally classical showed a mean heart rate of 108.915 bpm, mean arterial pressure of 100.25 mm HG, and a mean pulse of 68 bpm. As we predicted, Rap and Metal had higher mean heart rates and mean pulses. However, we were surprised to see that Classical had the second highest mean arterial rate of 102.5 (rap was 91.75 mm HG, metal 107.5 mm HG). Furthermore, we predicted that metal would be higher in all categories; however, rap had a higher mean pulse.
From this data, it is clear that different types of music change people’s blood pressure and heart rate. Faster, more intense music like metal and rap invoked higher mean pulses and mean heart rates. In addition, metal musicl created a higher arterial pressure. Overall, our hypothesis was partially correct. Although rap did not show higher arterial pressure than classical, we were correct in believing that the heart rate would be higher for rap and metal. Our experiment connects back to the pulmonary and nervous system. We can relate our experiment back to the auditory cortex and pulmonary artery information that we talked about.
Background Information from the Havard University Gazette:
Cromie, William J. "How Your Brain Listens to Music." The Harvard University Gazette 13 Nov. 1997: n. pag. The Harvard University Gazette. Web. 24 May 2011. <http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/11.13/HowYourBrainLis.html>.
Catherine M. | Heart Rate (all in bpm) | Mean Art. (all in mm HG) | Pulse (all in bpm) | mean heart rate (all in bpm) | |
0 seconds | 98 | 68 | 135 | ||
15 seconds | 150 | ||||
30 seconds | 146 | ||||
45 seconds | 118 | ||||
60 seconds | 126 | ||||
Catherine C. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 103 | 74 | 119.7 | ||
15 seconds | 85 | ||||
30 seconds | 120 | ||||
45 seconds | 145 | ||||
60 seconds | 149 | ||||
Catherine R. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 104 | 66 | 131.1 | ||
15 seconds | 146 | ||||
30 seconds | 140 | ||||
45 seconds | 109 | ||||
60 seconds | 138 | ||||
Vishal M. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 101 | 76 | 157 | ||
15 seconds | 71 | ||||
30 seconds | 237 | ||||
45 seconds | 107 | ||||
60 seconds | 169 | ||||
Vishal C. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 84 | 76 | 83.66 | ||
15 seconds | 73 | ||||
30 seconds | 83 | ||||
45 seconds | 60 | ||||
60 seconds | 47 | ||||
Vishal R. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 92 | 87 | 85.66 | ||
15 seconds | 87 | ||||
30 seconds | 138 | ||||
45 seconds | 80 | ||||
60 seconds | 128 | ||||
Vamsi C. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 102 | 83 | 110.6 | ||
15 seconds | 77 | ||||
30 seconds | 104 | ||||
45 seconds | 131 | ||||
60 seconds | 132 | ||||
Vamsi R. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 98 | 74 | 142.7 | ||
15 seconds | 248 | ||||
30 seconds | 118 | ||||
45 seconds | 163 | ||||
60 seconds | 99 | ||||
Vamsi M. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 111 | 74 | 115 | ||
15 seconds | 140 | ||||
30 seconds | 88 | ||||
45 seconds | 88 | ||||
60 seconds | 196 | ||||
Neil C. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 114 | 39 | 121.7 | ||
15 seconds | 66 | ||||
30 seconds | 137 | ||||
45 seconds | 99 | ||||
60 seconds | 166 | ||||
Neil M. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 120 | 62 | 212.4 | ||
15 seconds | 219 | ||||
30 seconds | 186 | ||||
45 seconds | 215 | ||||
60 seconds | 232 | ||||
Neil R. | Heart Rate | Mean Art. | Pulse | mean heart rate | |
0 seconds | 73 | 86 | 214.5 | ||
15 seconds | 189 | ||||
30 seconds | 205 | ||||
45 seconds | 233 | ||||
60 seconds | 219 | ||||
metal | Average heart rate (bpm) | ||||
154.85 | |||||
classical | |||||
108.915 | |||||
rap | |||||
122.075 | |||||
classical | mean arterial rate (mm HG) | ||||
100.75 | |||||
rap | |||||
91.75 | |||||
metal | |||||
107.5 | |||||
classical | Mean pulse (bpm) | ||||
68 | |||||
rap | |||||
78.25 | |||||
metal | |||||
70 | |||||
