Studying the Effect of Bengali Folk Music on Human Autonomic Nervous System Through Multi-Fractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis of HRV Signals

Abstract

Music therapy is a frequently used tool to treat cardiac and neurological diseases. It has been proven that music impacts human body as well as mind. The reason behind such impact of music on humans is because of the release of a chemical agent inside the brain known as dopamine also known as the happy hormone. Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is reactive to the chemical stimuli which comprises of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. In this paper, we present the effect of Bengali folk music on ANS. The signals were taken while the subject is listening to music and also during normal resting condition. In time series analysis, multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) is used for determining the statistical self-affinity and highly chaotic behavior of a signal. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis is used as a quantifying parameter to detect the effect of Bengali folk music on ANS. Our experimental result shows a satisfactory result in this context.