Music can enhance exercise-induced sympathetic dominancy assessed by heart rate variability
Kayako Urakawa and Kazuhito Yokoyama, School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Mie University and Department of Public Health and Occupational Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Mie University, Japan
The researchers examined whether music affects the exercise-induced changes in the autonomic nervous system activity in twelve healthy female college students. Music was given according to subjects’ preferences using a vibroacoustic apparatus with low-pitch sounds. With music, ratio of low frequency to high frequency component of heart rate variability LF/HF was significantly increased after exercise as compared with before exercise. P < 0.01. By contrast, the changes in LH/HF were not significant without music. P> 0.05. It is suggested that after exercise in which sympathetic nerve activity is dominant, preferred music synchronizes with the activated physical response, further promoting the response and increasing sympathetic nerve activity.
Source: Tohoku University Medical Press