Re: Why does music with a faster tempo cause people to type faster?

Hi there

I'm afraid I can't find the paper you've mentioned here but I hope I can 
give you some ideas about the results it mentions.

Lots of scientific papers describe how music can change the rate at which 
your heart beats.  Most (but not all) of these papers found that listening 
to slower music can slow your heart-rate and so make you relax.  Music with 
a faster tempo tends to make you breathe faster and also makes the heart 
beat faster.  This is why music in clubs is deliberately paced at a high 
number of beats per minute - it tricks your body into mimicking the 
symptoms of emotional excitement.

I can't find any papers which suggest exactly _why_ peoples' heart-rate 
might increase when listening to a piece of music with a higher number of 
beats per minute.  I wonder if this happens _because_ it also causes them 
to breathe faster - people tend to breathe differently depending on what 
they're listening to or what they're thinking about.  The heart responds to 
the increased rate of breathing by beating faster to make sure that your 
blood circulates fast enough to take in all that extra oxygen your lungs 
are bringing in.

At this point your body is in a high state of physiological arousal 
sometimes called the "fight or flight" (or 'sympathetic') state [the body's 
opposite,'parasympathetic' state, deals with feeding behaviour and 
reproductive function].  Circulation of the blood is greatest in your 
limbs, lungs and nervous system and you are ready for action [many of your 
inner organs, like your stomach and bladder, are 'on hold' at this point 
since they are not so useful right now].  

People in this aroused state have faster reflexes (exactly what you would 
need if facing down an enemy or preparing to run away from him) so it would 
make perfect sense that they are able to type faster. [To give an extreme 
example, compare this with someone who goes back to their desk after a huge 
lunch, who is trying to type and digest food at the same time!]

What would be really interesting to see was if the music was slowed again, 
whether the 'fast music' peoples' advantage went away, and how long it took 
(since it takes the body a little while to 'come down' from such a state).

I hope this answers your question  :)

There is a nice table on this web page (Washington University Medical 
School, dept. of Neurology) showing what your bodily organs do during 
sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal:

 http://www.neuro.wustl.edu/neuromuscular/nother/autonomic/autonfcn.htm