MADRID, 20 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
New research has found that there are three potentially unique acoustic characteristics of healing music that transcend musical genres, its authors publish in the open access journal ‘General Psychiatry’.
The findings could help personalize playlists for patients, using artificial intelligence to analyze individual physiological and psychological responses, and help evaluate the effectiveness of existing music therapies, suggest the researchers, led by Dr Yue Ding, from the Shanghai Mental Health Center and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China).
Despite evidence of music’s therapeutic effects on mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, there is no consensus on what defines healing music, researchers say.
So they wanted to find out if healing music shares certain acoustic characteristics, regardless of genre, and if these characteristics are different from those found in regular music.
To compile a library of healing music, they drew on recommendations from 35 therapists, all of whom have several years of experience in music therapy practice and/or research.
The result was a collection of 165 different pieces of music that the experts frequently used in their daily practice or that they found useful in treating emotional and other mental health problems.
They were compared to 330 pieces of classical music written by 10 composers and performed with 11 instruments; 50 pieces of 5-element Chinese traditional music; 100 Jazz Recordings; and 300 emotional music recordings from the Chinese affective music system.
Traditional Chinese music of the five elements comprises five different tones or tones, each of which connects with the liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys, corresponding to the five elements of wood, fire, metal, earth and water.
The Chinese affective music system encompasses seven different emotional states: happiness, calm, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise. Each clip is accompanied by a series of indicator data, two of which were used in this study: valence, which describes the music’s ability to evoke feelings of happiness or sadness, and arousal.
The pieces included 9 different genres: classical; electronics; rhythm and blues (R&B); film scores (soundtrack); folk; jazz; military music (marching); New Age; and pop.
Classical music represents the largest proportion (28.5%) of recommendations, followed by pop music (18%). None of the remaining genres represented more than 15% of the total. Five participants nominated ‘Castle in the Sky’, by Japanese musician Joe Hisaishi.
Next, the researchers used a tool (Mirtoolbox) designed specifically for the extraction of musical features from audio files for statistical analysis, segmentation and clustering purposes.
370 acoustic characteristics grouped into five dimensions were obtained: (1) energy, volume and loudness; (2) rhythm (tempo and beat); (3) timbre; (4) pitch (frequency and harmonicity); and (5) tonality (tone field).
About 1 in 4 (25.5%) of these characteristics were specifically associated with their gender, but the rest were shared across all genders.
To find out if these common elements contributed to the healing properties of the music, they were compared with classical healing music pieces and traditional Chinese 5-element music.
This showed that more than a quarter (more than 26%) of the acoustic characteristics differed significantly between “healing” classical music pieces (47) and normal classical music pieces.
Furthermore, there was strong evidence that all pieces of healing music and traditional Chinese music shared almost 10% of their acoustic characteristics.
On this basis, three potentially distinctive acoustic features of healing music were identified that were independent of genre, differed from regular music of the same genre, and were consistent across different types of healing music.
The findings were validated when the acoustic characteristics of jazz pieces from the healing music collection were compared to those of regular jazz music.
And the researchers say they echo previous research indicating that music is a universal language that transcends cultures and genres. This includes traditional music forms such as pilgrimage songs in Nigeria, highlife drumming in Ghana, singing bowl music in India, and five element music in China.
They acknowledge that they relied on a relatively small number of experts to create their healing music collection and that cultural factors may limit the broader applicability of their findings.
But they suggest that incorporating the three acoustic characteristics into music could allow healthcare professionals to personalize therapeutic playlists for patients, leveraging AI algorithms to analyze physiological and psychological responses in real time.
“The implications of these findings can be applied in various contexts, such as music therapy to reduce stress, mental health, and the treatment of chronic pain,” they conclude.
2023-12-20 06:40:41
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