Browsing by Subject "heart rate"

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between autonomic arousal, activation and auditory change detection in musicians and non-musicians, as reflected by the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related potential response and cardiovascular activity measured in heart rate. 20 musicians and 20 non-musicians were included in the study. An oddball paradigm composed of stimuli deviating in three difficulty levels from standard tone in pitch, duration and location was utilized with two conditions of passive listening, which were followed by intermittent active listening tasks. Only pitch and duration deviants were analysed. Musicians exhibited greater MMN amplitudes, shorter MMN latencies and superior behavioral performance evidenced by discrimination accuracy and reaction time. The effects were observed for both pitch and duration deviants. Musicians' resting heart rates were lower during pre-experiment and both pre-task baselines, indicating higher cardiovascular efficiency. Greater task-related heart rate acceleration in active listening was observed in the musician group than in the non-musician group. MMN amplitude to pitch deviants during passive listening tasks correlated positively with behavioral accuracy in active discrimination tasks. Faster heart rate during active listening predicted better task performance in musician group, whereas the effect was opposite in non-musician group. In musician group, higher heart rate increased the task performance more for subjects with smaller MMN amplitudes. These data thus imply that cortically measured preattentive auditory discrimination capacity is reciprocally connected to the arousal dimension of autonomic nervous system's activity and that musical expertise affects this relationship. Results add support to the evidence of musicians' superior auditory change detection capacity measured in event-related potentials and behavioral performance, while providing new insights to the role of psychophysiological arousal in sound processing and other mental tasks.