EFFECTS OF VIBROACOUSTIC STIMULATION ON THE MUSIC LISTENING EXPERIENCE: AN MEG STUDY

Music listening affects the state of the body and brain by modulating heart rate, neural oscillations etc. In this study, we examined whether changing the state of the body through vibroacoustic stimulation (VAS), a whole body sinusoidal sound stimulation at 40 Hz, can alter the music listening experience. The study employed a within-subject crossover design: in one session, the participants received the stimulation for 20 minutes and in another, they lay on the VA mattress without receiving the stimulation (Stim/NoStim task). This task was followed first by recording resting state neural activity using MEG, then by 10 minutes of listening to participant selected relaxing music (music listening task) and last by recording resting state activity again. We measured 40 healthy adults. The FOOOF algorithm, which parameterizes the neural spectrum into aperiodic (exponent and offset) and periodic (oscillatory) components, was used on parcellated brain regions following source modelling. We examined whether neural activity during the resting state recordings would be influenced by the stimulation alone or following the music listening task. We found a significant decrease in the exponent, i.e the slope of the frequency spectrum, in the somatosensory and motor regions of the left hemisphere in the modulation of resting state activity before and after music listening between the stimulation and no stimulation conditions. We speculate that the exponent, which is hypothesized to represent the excitatory/inhibitory signaling balance in the brain, is modulated by the stimulation and could indicate increased excitatory activity in the somatomotor regions following music listening.