Re: Does music effect blood pressure?

Hi Cliff.
Here are two articles and a couple of links that should answer your question. One of my friends used to say that he got "music in his blood". As you can see, everyone has "music in their blood". Music seems to affect blood pressure of everyone, even the baboons in the second article!

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An exploratory study of musical emotions and psychophysiology.

Krumhansl CL

Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.

clk4@cornell.edu

A basic issue about musical emotions concerns whether music elicits emotional responses in listeners (the 'emotivist' position) or simply expresses emotions that listeners recognize in the music (the 'cognitivist' position). To address this, psychophysiological measures were recorded while listners heard two excerpts chosen to represent each of three emotions: sad, fear, and happy. The measures covered a fairly wide spectrum of cardiac, vascular, electrodermal, and respiratory functions. Other subjects indicated dynamic changes in emotions they experienced while listening to the music on one of four scales: sad, fear, happy, and tension. Both physiological and emotion judgements were made on a second-by-second basis. The physiological measures all showed a significant effect of music compared to the pre-music interval. A number of analyses, including correlations between physiology and emotion judgments, found significant differences among the excerpts. The sad excerpts produced the largest changes in heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance and temperature. The fear excerpts produced the largest changes in blood transit time and amplitude. The happy excerpts produced the largest changes in the measures of respiration. These emotion-specific physiological changes only partially replicated those found for nonmusical emotions. The physiological effects of music observed generally support the emotivist view of musical emotions.

PMID: 9606949, UI: 98269794

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The physiological and behavioral effects of radio music on singly housed baboons.

Brent L, Weaver D

Department of Laboratory Animal Medicine, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, Texas 78245, USA.

The response of four singly caged baboons to radio music was measured using behavioral and physiological indices. Heart rate and blood pressure, measured through a tether system, as well as behavior, were recorded during a two-week period in which radio music was available in half of the samples. The behavior of the subjects, as well as their blood pressure, did not vary in relation to radio music. Heart rate was significantly lower when the radio was on.

PMID: 9029403, UI: 97181242

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From Hiroshima University:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=10519843&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b

From a German article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?uid=463054&form=6&db=m&Dopt=b

My website: has a link to Pubmed at the very end
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/7063

Note: if the links don't work, just type the whole thing in yourself. If that doesn't work (it should), go to Pubmed and search for "music" + "blood" + "pressure".

Arash E.
Genetics
UBC