Effect of a Romantic Song on the Autonomic Nervous System and the Heart of Indian Male Volunteers

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that music alters the psychological condition of a person. However, numerous studies have reported that music can also alter the physiological parameters of a person. This has resulted in an increased demand of music therapy in the last few decades. The current study is an attempt to understand the effect of an old generation romantic music(Bollywood song of late nineties) on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the cardiac electrophysiology (CE) of sedentary young Indian volunteers. ECG signals were acquired for 5 min from 15 healthy male volunteers (in the age range of 18-22 years) during the pre- and the post-stimulus conditions. The ECG signals were processed to extract the RR intervals (RRIs). Recurrence analysis of the RRIs was performed, which suggested an alteration in the RRIs obtained during the pre- and the post-music conditions, respectively. Thereafter, heart rate variability (HRV) analysis was performed to find out the exact change in the ANS activity due to music. The results of HRV analysis suggested a parasympathetic dominance when the volunteers were exposed to the old generation romantic music. The time domain and wavelet domain analyses of ECG signals were performed to understand the effect of the old generation romantic music on the CE. The results suggested significant alteration in the CE activity due to music. Artificial neural network based classification of the HRV, time domain ECG and wavelet-processed ECG resulted in a classification accuracy of ≥ 90%.