music and its magic

In recent years, musical therapy has been attracting attention as one way to relieve stress. It is often used for purposes other than those in the medical field. It has also been seen to be effective in the reduction of psychological stress. However, those previous researches and studies about music only focus on measuring heart rate variability and brain waves.


This time, Kenichi Itao together with Makoto Komazawa and Hiroyuki Kobayashi proved that blood flow, changes in heart rate variability and body surface temperature react to music, as well as its comforting effect.
12 healthy women were selected to participate in this study. During the experiment, subjects were given to listen to 5 minutes of silence, followed by 3 minutes of music, followed by 5 more minutes of silence. The music used for this test are Classical music, healing music, and Japanese pop music (J-Pop).

Amazingly, the result showed a rise in blood flow when listening to classical music. However, for J-Pop and healing music, the researchers  could not really find a variability in blood flow volume. The age factor could be the reason why. It is possible to expect a relaxing effect from classical music. This result was more varied by age group for J-Pop and healing music. The real reason behind this findings  may be due to differences in musical preferences between the generations.

Secondly, the test focused on heart  variability. The larger the reading, the more tension, stimulation and stress. In average, the results show that the subjects gets to relax more while listening to classical and J-pop compared to before and afterwards. These results show that while listening to music, sympathetic nervous system is suppressed and parasympathetic nervous system is heightened, meaning a relaxing effect can be expected.

Body surface temperature did rise after listening to both classical and healing music. Each age group generally conforms with the overall tendency. A tendency can be seen for a particularly significant rise in body surface temperature while listening to healing music.
In a simple way, music also can hype you up by increasing your body temperature by listening to classical or healing music.