Regulation of LTP at rat hippocampal Schaffer-CA1 in vitro by musical rhythmic magnetic fields generated by red-pink (soothing) music tracks.

Purpose: Music therapy, like red-pink (soothing) music, is an important treatment for neurological disorders associated with learning and memory. Magnetic fields have been proved to have a similar regulating effect. However, the effect of magnetic fields with musical rhythm generated by the combination of the two has not been confirmed. This study aimed to investigate the regulation of magnetic stimulation with music rhythm on LTP (long-term potentiation) of Schaffer-CA1.

Materials and methods: This article selected three sorts of music tracks in different frequencies (music track (1) Turkish March, music track (2) Moonlight Sonata, music track (3) Funeral March) and four sorts of pure sinusoidal tracks of four different harmonic frequency (music track (4) the frequency is 3500 Hz; music track (5) the frequency is 2500 Hz; music track (6) the frequency is 1500 Hz; music track (7) the frequency is 500 Hz). These music tracks are converted into analog signals by the external sound card and power amplifier and fed into a homemade coil that meets the demand for this frequency bandwidth. The coil can generate seven sorts of time-varying magnetic fields with musical rhythm with a mean intensity of about 2 mT. We used multi-electrode array (MEA) to record the LTP signals of Schaffer-CA1 synaptic induced by seven sorts of musical rhythmic magnetic fields and analyze the regulation of them.

Results: The musical rhythmic magnetic fields generated by track 1 and track 2 have a remarkable enhancing effect on the amplitude of fEPSPs (field excitatory postsynaptic potentials) (p < .05), and these effects intensify with the increase of frequency. Nevertheless, there is no significant enhancing effect on LTP of the rhythmic magnetic field generated by track 3 (p > .05). The sinusoidal magnetic fields generated by track 4 and track 5 have an enhancing effect on the amplitude of fEPSPs (p < .05), and the enhancement is better than track 1 and track 2. The sinusoidal magnetic fields generated by track 6 and track 7 have an inhibiting effect (p < .05).

Conclusion: We found that the enhancing effect of musical rhythmic magnetic fields generated by track 1 was the most significant. The frequency of 1500 Hz could be a turning-point frequency in the regulation of magnetic field on LTP.