Christmas would not be Christmas without carols and the festive songs we all love singing along to. It has long been acknowledged that music can influence mood and we’ve all experienced that moment when the right song at the right time really lifts our spirits.
It does this by affecting the autonomic nervous system, the physiological processes which keep us alive but over which we have little, if any, control, such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Indeed we can sometimes feel the heart rate quickening and slowing along with the tension and release of a musical score.
Researchers have now developed an application which can capture these physiological changes in real time, as the music plays, in an effort to try to understand how music produces these effects.
The developers of HeartFM (not to be confused with the radio station!) ultimately aim to use this tool to be able to deliver personalised musical therapy “to achieve targeted autonomic nervous system responses”. With this in mind, it may not be long before music really is medicine.
Read more here