Music is known to make positive or negative changes of human functioning. Moreover the definition of a type of influence is possible only on the assumption of knowing the context situation. Whereas what has positive influence in one situation could have negative influence in another one and vice versa.
We tried to find basic principles of musical influence on human functioning by observing the EEG changes. These principles let scientists use music regardless of its genre or prevailing frequencies. Basic principles include modal versions and tonal distance, which are contained in every music peace.
There were 14 test students of the Lobachevsky State University of the faculty of Social Sciences of both sex (5 males and 9 females), at the age between 17 and 28 (average age is 20,7±3,4). None of them were professional musicians but 12 of them had the experience of playing the musical instruments or studying singing (average length of studies is 4±3,2). All the test students were right-handed. Before participating in the experiment, each student reviewed and signed a form of voluntary consent to participate.
The incentives were made as follows. There were 12 short written musical phrases for each of 12 modulation grades (i.e. black and white piano keys). The beginning and ending were modified to get all the possible variants of modulation (from major to major, from major to minor, from minor to major and from minor to minor). Tonal distance was determined by the number of tones being replaced in the musical scale of the initial key. The more changes were made, the larger is the distance. Stimuli were divided into groups: modal versions and the tonal distance.
The scheme of the experiment included the following stages. Firstly instruction of the test students and listening to the test music stimulus and filling the test questionnaire were done, then checking the pretest level of the EEG for 3 minutes was made. After that the experiment was made with the 48 randomly presented incentives and a questionnaire of semantic differential being done after each of musical stimuli and finally checking the post-test level of the EEG for 3 minutes. Semantic differential was given to keep the attention of participants and to give them some rest.
The EEG was recorded with the help of BaseMonopolar system with 6 electrodes (Т3, Т4, С3, С4, P3, P4). The power spectrum was calculated for the following frequency ranges: theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), beta1 (13-24 Hz), and beta2 (25-35 Hz).
For spectral analysis we used EEG data 10 seconds before presenting the audio incentive, 10 seconds during listening to musical incentive, and 10 seconds after the listening to musical incentive. For statistical processing the absolute values of the capacity and the relative values of the capacity were used. For the absolute values of the capacity a normalization procedure (z-scale) was used.
Statistical processing was conducted using Microsoft Excel 2010 and Statistica 10. W-Wilcoxon test for dependent samples and a principal component method (PCA) were calculated.
We got the following results. Firstly, listening to musical stimuli affects cortical structure synchronization on the alpha range and cortical structure desynchronization on the beta range. Secondly, the larger cortical structure synchronization and desynchronization levels are noticed to be in temporal and central areas for alpha and theta ranges respectively. And thirdly, the larger the tonal distance is, the more cortical structure synchronization and desynchronization on beta, and alpha and theta ranges are respectively.
Finally it can be observed that during the work the literature review on the theme of the influence of music on the psychophysiological state of a person was made. The experiment with listening to musical incentives and EEG recording were carried out. The results of this research can be applied to further study. In the future that will help to create incentives for particular desired situations.
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