The human body runs on rhythms: a natural awake and sleep cycle, daily hunger cycles and, of course, your heartbeat. Your heartbeat is part of your body’s natural rhythm, a tempo that usually ranges between 60 and 80 beats per minute. But when other rhythms and tempos are present, such as those of music, they can temporarily alter your body’s natural rhythm by affecting your heart rate.
Correlation
Music’s impact on your heart rate is based more on the piece’s speed than on your personal preference. Faster tempos translate to faster heart rates, while slower tempos inspire slower heart rates. However, the genre of music--and whether or not you like the particular style of music--has less of an effect on your heart rate.
Trained Musicians
Dr. Peter Sleight of the University of Oxford, in conjunction with other British and Italian colleagues, conducted a study of 24 young men and women and their responses in heart rate and breathing while listening to music. His study found that trained musicians have more noticeable responses to different tempos; Sleight suspects their heightened response is due to having to learn to synchronize their breathing and physical motions with musical phrasing and segments.
Unconscious Response
Just as music provokes a change in a healthy person’s heart rate, it also inspires a shift in pulse of people who are in a vegetative state. A study conducted by Francesco Riganello of Italy’s Santa Anna Institute demonstrated that heart rates of comatose people who were exposed to classical music changed in the same ways as those of healthy, conscious people. The study helped demonstrate the brain’s functionality, as well as its ability to process external stimuli, despite a lack of consciousness.
Music Therapy
Music therapy is an alternative branch of psychology and health care that utilizes music to promote positive changes in patients. While music therapy is normally used for social and emotional purposes, it is sometimes used for physical and stress-relieving purposes as well as physical rehabilitation. Music’s proven effect on human heart rates helps promote the use of music therapy as part of physical wellness, pain alleviation and the reduction of high blood pressure.
Exercise
Many people choose to exercise with the aid of music; dance and aerobics classes are structured with music, and many people walk and jog to the beat of their portable music devices. Not only does the music make the exercise a more pleasant experience, but it also helps raise your heart rate. Exercisers who participate in a standard step test for three minutes with no musical accompaniment noticed an increase of 21 beats per minute, while exercisers who participated in the same step test with musical accompaniment saw their heart rates increase by 34 beats per minute.
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