Impact of Music on College Students: Analysis of Galvanic Skin Responses

Abstract

Purpose: The impact of music on the human body is an important trend in music research. Different kinds of music have direct and indirect effects on physiological functions and parameters in normal and pathological conditions. Among various physiological measurements, the galvanic skin response is a noninvasive, useful, simple and reproducible method of capturing the autonomic nerve response. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of Persian music on galvanic skin response. Basic methods: Galvanic skin response signals of 25 college students (10 women and 15 men) were collected. Mean, amplitude, rise time and Lyapunov exponents of the signals were calculated. Main results: The results show that not only the galvanic skin response amplitude is higher in men subjects during rest, but it also increased to the higher values during music than that of women. In addition, the fluctuations of it increased during music in men group; while it decreased in women group. The positive values of Lyapunov exponents suggest that all galvanic skin responses have low dimensional chaos. In addition, the complexity of galvanic skin responses is decreased during music. Conclusions: Our study has shown that the same music protocol has different reflections on the galvanic skin response of women and men. Furthermore, the proposed method may serve as a quantitative measure for emotional states such as listening to the music.