Study of the effect of different music stimuli on autonomic nervous system of a single subject

Abstract

Study of the effect of music on autonomic nervous system of human being through the analysis of Heart rate variability (HRV) signals is a very recent area of research. The present paper considers the effect of seven different types of music stimuli on a single subject. The data of the HRV signals are subjected to a recently developed technique known as `frequency-delay plot'. The quantification is done by `ellipsoid fit' and allied five different types of quantification measures. Such results of quantification are then analyzed by the method of 'randomized block ANOVA. It is proved that all the different types of music stimuli have different effects on ANS of the subject, and that the effects are significantly different. Moreover the five different measures also do differ significantly on the music data. Finally to test which music signal affects ANS most, we consider, as population, the totality of all data corresponding to different types of songs and different types of measures taken. By considering the data of individual song under all measures as data of a sample, we calculate the interval of confidence of the population mean and the population variance with the help of each sample mean and sample variance at 0.95 level of confidence. It is proved that the length of confidence interval for population mean as well as for population variance is minimum only in the case of song1. In other words, it means that song1 is the most effective one on ANS of the subject.