Whether house, trance, acid, dubstep or hardcore techno, many music lovers enjoy electronic genres thanks to their strong beats and heady rhythms that lead them into a state of trance. Now Spanish researchers have studied this phenomenon to discover its neurological implications.
Raquel Aparicio Terrés and colleagues at the University of Barcelona conducted an experiment involving 20 volunteers aged between 18 and 22. They had them listen to six short excerpts of electronic music, including “Endless Horizons” by Dhamika, “Mind Expander” by Audiomatic, and “Audioslave” by Vertex.
Through electrodes, the scientists used electroencephalography to record the electrical activity of the participants’ brains throughout the experiment. At the same time, the volunteers were asked to perform cognitive tasks measuring their concentration and reactivity.
They were also asked to answer questionnaires assessing the impact of each of the six sound extracts on their state of consciousness. This refers to an individual’s overall mental state – their level of alertness, attention, perception, and interaction with their environment.
‘Entrainment’
The researchers noted that participants’ brain activity seemed to synchronise with the rhythms they heard. In other words, they experienced what is known in biomusicology as “entrainment”: the fact that biological rhythms, such as heartbeats or brainwaves, tend to enter into synchronisation with music.
So, if we listen to very uptempo tunes, our body follows suit by accelerating our heart rate. Softer songs, on the other hand, will have the opposite effect.
The effects of entrainment were particularly pronounced when the volunteers listened to the excerpt at a frequency of 1.65Hz, during which they reported feeling “a sense of unity”.
Generally, the researchers believe that electronic music could alter our state of consciousness by affecting our reaction times and sense of unity. But this phenomenon needs to be examined in greater depth to understand the links between “entrainment, reaction times, and personality traits and/or individual cognitive characteristics”.
A better understanding of these mechanisms could, in particular, improve the management of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness, the experts concluded.