Analysis of cerebral blood flow complexity when listening music with emotional content

Abstract

Despite differences in ethnicities, culture, or language, music is a universal stimulus that can evoke intense feelings in people. Studying its effects, however, is challenging because of its emotional nature. This study analyzes the effects of listening different sound stimuli, such as music with emotional content, on cerebral hemodynamics. Cerebral blood flow signals were recorded for 16 subjects while performing five different music tasks. The complexity of each signal was estimated using multiscale Sample entropy. Significant differences in mean complexity was found between two tasks, which suggests that intense cognitive activities having emotional content yield a decrease in the complexity of cerebral hemodynamics. Copyright © 2021 by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.