Investigation of Brain Activity During Listening to and Imagining Music

Abstract

Effects of imagining music as the relaxation task after the study task compared with listening to music were investigated in terms of prefrontal activity. Prefrontal activity was determined from changes in oxy-hemoglobin (Hb) and deoxy-Hb measured by 10-channel wearable optical topography. In this study, we hypothesized that subjects would relax, or experience reduced mental stress when prefrontal activity became inactive. Accuracy of imagining music estimated by VAS was defined as the imagining-accuracy (IA). Three types of music were used during the relaxation tasks were as follows: (1) uplifting song; (2) relaxing song; (3) classical music. Amount of prefrontal inactivity (relaxation effect) were not significantly different between listening to music and imagining music when the IA value was high(i.e., uplifting song and relaxing song).However, its amount was lower the case of imagining music than the case of listening to music when the IA value was low(i.e., classical music), which indicates imagining music accurately is important factor for the effective relaxation.