László Harmat

The psychophysiology of flow during piano playing.

Expert performance is commonly accompanied by a subjective state of optimal experience called flow. Previous research has shown positive correlations between flow and quality of performance and suggests that flow may function as a reward signal that promotes practice. Here, piano playing was used as a flow-inducing behavior in order to analyze the relationship between subjective flow reports and psychophysiological measures. Professional classical pianists were asked to play a musical piece and then rate state flow. The performance was repeated five times in order to induce a variation in flow, keeping other factors constant, while recording the arterial pulse pressure waveform, respiration, head movements, and activity from the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major facial muscles. A significant relation was found between flow and heart period, blood pressure, heart rate variability, activity of the zygomaticus major muscle, and respiratory depth. These findings are discussed in relation to current models of emotion, attention, and expertise, and flow is proposed to be a state of effortless attention, which arises through an interaction between positive affect and high attention.

Music improves sleep quality in students

AIM This paper is a report of a study to investigate the effects of music on sleep quality in young participants with poor sleep. BACKGROUND Sleep disorders may result in fatigue, tiredness, depression and problems in daytime functioning. Music can reduce sympathetic nervous system activity, decrease anxiety, blood pressure, heart and respiratory rate and may have positive effects on sleep via muscle relaxation and distraction from thoughts. Control groups have not been used in most previous studies. METHODS We used a three-group repeated measures design. Ninety-four students (aged between 19 and 28 years) with sleep complaints were studied in 2006. Participants listened for 45 minutes either to relaxing classical music (Group 1) or an audiobook (Group 2) at bedtime for 3 weeks. The control group (Group 3) received no intervention. Sleep quality was measured using the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index before the study and weekly during the intervention. Depressive symptoms in experimental group participants were measured using the Beck Depression Inventory. RESULTS Repeated measures anova revealed a main effect of TIME (P < 0.0001) and an interaction between TIME and GROUPS (P < 0.0001). Post hoc tests with Bonferroni correction showed that music statistically significantly improved sleep quality (P < 0.0001). Sleep quality did not improve statistically significantly in the audiobook and the control group. Depressive symptoms decreased statistically significantly in the music group (P < 0.0001), but not in the group listening to audiobooks. CONCLUSION Relaxing classical music is an effective intervention in reducing sleeping problems. Nurses could use this safe, cheap and easy to learn method to treat insomnia.

Physiological correlates of the flow experience during computer game playing

Flow is the subjective experience of effortless attention, reduced self-awareness, and enjoyment that typically occurs during optimal task performance. Previous studies have suggested that flow may be associated with a non-reciprocal coactivation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and, on a cortical level, with a state of hypofrontality and implicit processing. Here, we test these hypotheses, using the computer game TETRIS as model task. The participants (n=77) played TETRIS under three conditions that differed in difficulty (Easy<Optimal<Difficult). Cardiac and respiratory activities, and the average oxygenation changes of the prefrontal cortex were measured continuously with functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during performance. The Optimal condition was characterized by the highest levels of state flow, positive affect, and effortless attention. The associations between self-reported psychological flow and physiological measures were investigated using a series of repeated measures linear mixed model analyses. The results showed that higher flow was associated with larger respiratory depth and lower LF. The higher respiratory depth during high flow is indicative of a more relaxed state with an increased parasympathetic activity, and thus provides partial support for the main hypotheses. There was no association between frontal cortical oxygenation and flow, even at liberal thresholds; i.e. we found no support that flow is related to a state of hypofrontality.

Similar but different : interviewing monozygotic twins discordant for musical practice

Musical engagement is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. Here, we explored non-genetic influences on musical engagement by performing semi-structured interviews of 10 Swedish monozygotic twin pairs that were highly discordant for piano practicing. The interviews were organized into five sections – (i) perceived reasons for the discordance; (ii) childhood differences in specific music related variables; (iii) strong memories of music; (iv) the perceived meaning of music in life and for health; and (v) language interests – and analyzed using response categorization. The playing twins from an early age found music more interesting and enjoyable than their co-twins and also gave richer and more elaborate descriptions of the meaning of music in life, in several cases emphasizing that music was important for their personal identity. In line with this, an analysis of previously collected web questionnaire data showed that the playing twins had a significantly higher openness to experience and proneness to experience flow during musical activities. In contrast, the twins reported essentially no within-pair differences in the musical engagement of their peers, parental support, music teacher, ensemble playing, public performances, and their interest and aptitude for languages. The interviews gave no indication that the differences in musical engagement were caused by systematic environmental influences that were consistent across twin pairs. Rather, the respondents presented a wide range of different explanations for their discordance in musical activity, suggesting that the remaining influences on musical engagement, when genetics and family environment are controlled for, may be highly individual and idiosyncratic.

Reliability and validity of the Hungarian version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI-HUN): comparing psychiatric patients with control subjects.

PurposeThe Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index is used to evaluate subjective sleep quality, and it is commonly used in clinical research. Subjective sleep quality is also an important clinical measure in patients with psychiatric disorders. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Hungarian version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI-HUN) in both clinical and non-clinical samples.MethodsThe original version of PSQI was translated into Hungarian according to standard guidelines. The PSQI-HUN and the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS) were subsequently administered to 53 psychiatric patients (schizophrenia, recurrent depressive disorder, mixed anxiety, and depressive disorder) and 178 healthy controls.ResultsInternal consistency as measured by Cronbach’s alpha in the whole sample was 0.79. Pearson’s product-moment correlations between component scores and the global scores were high (0.59–0.88) in the PSQI-HUN indicating the homogeneity of the scale. PSQI-HUN global and component scores differed significantly between psychiatric patients and control subjects. In the psychiatric patient subsample, schizophrenics had lower global scores compared to the other two patient groups. The analysis of convergent validity showed significant correlations between the AIS and the global as well as the component scores of the PSQI-HUN (except the component of sleep latency).ConclusionsThe present study concludes that the PSQI-HUN is a reliable, valid, and standardized measure for assessment of the subjective sleep quality in clinical and research settings.

Music listening has no positive or negative effects on sleep quality of normal sleepers: Results of a randomized controlled trial

This paper investigates the effects of a music listening intervention on sleep quality in young participants with normal sleep. Recent studies show that relaxing classical music is an effective intervention to reduce sleep problems. The question arises, if such an intervention might have side effects on people who are not faced with sleep difficulties at first instance. We hypothesized that listening to relaxing classical music has an effect (either positive or negative) on the sleep quality of normal sleepers. To test this hypothesis we conducted a randomized control trial (RCT). Ten students (age 20 to 29 years) without sleep complaints listened to relaxing classical music at bedtime for three weeks for 45 minutes. Participants in the control group (n = 10) received no intervention. Sleep quality was measured at four times using the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) before the study and weekly during the intervention period. To analyse the data, a two-way repeated measures ANOVA was calculated. Results did not reveal a statistically significant interaction between TIME and GROUP. Post-hoc comparisons showed that music listening has no influence on sleep quality at any given measuring time. However, the lack of significant effects may also be due to a type II error. Together with previous findings, we conclude that no adverse or side effects accompany the previously reported benefits of this music listening intervention. Further studies are needed to investigate the impact of music characteristics, musical preferences of participants and possible side effects of the intervention in different populations.

Flow and Individual Differences – A Phenotypic Analysis of Data from More than 10,000 Twin Individuals

Earlier studies suggest that individual differences in flow experiences depend on both situational variables, e.g. the environmental opportunities to engage in flow promoting activities, and personal traits. Here, we present results of phenotypic analyses of associations between flow proneness and five major modalities of individual differences, i.e. personality, cognitive abilities, motivation, emotional competence (alexithymia) and performance on chronometric tasks. The data was collected using self-report questionnaires in a cohort of more than 10,000 Swedish twin individuals. The aim of the study was partly exploratory, but we also addressed three specific hypotheses suggested by earlier literature, i.e. that flow proneness is (i) correlated with personality, specifically with traits reflecting emotional stability (low neuroticism) and conscientiousness; (ii) unrelated to cognitive ability; and (iii) correlated with trait intrinsic motivation. The results confirmed all three hypotheses. Additional main findings were that flow proneness is related to extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, low schizotypy, and emotional competence (low alexithymia). Sex differences in flow proneness were mostly negligible, but flow proneness increased weakly with age. In summary, individual differences in flow proneness show substantial relations to personality related traits but appear essentially independent of cognitive abilities. We conclude that the results taken together support the notion of flow proneness being related to an autotelic personality, and discuss the potential implication of relations between the observed correlates of flow proneness and outcomes related to health and well-being.

The wisdom of the body: Listeners' autonomic arousal distinguishes between spontaneous and posed vocal emotions

It has been the matter of much debate whether perceivers are able to distinguish spontaneous vocal expressions of emotion from posed vocal expressions (e.g., emotion portrayals). In this experiment, we show that such discrimination can be manifested in the autonomic arousal of listeners during implicit processing of vocal emotions. Participants (N = 21, age: 20-55 years) listened to two consecutive blocks of brief voice clips and judged the gender of the speaker in each clip, while we recorded three measures of sympathetic arousal of the autonomic nervous system (skin conductance level, mean arterial blood pressure, pulse rate). Unbeknownst to the listeners, the blocks consisted of two types of emotional speech: spontaneous and posed clips. As predicted, spontaneous clips yielded higher arousal levels than posed clips, suggesting that listeners implicitly distinguished between the two kinds of expression, even in the absence of any requirement to retrieve emotional information from the voice. We discuss the results with regard to theories of emotional contagion and the use of posed stimuli in studies of emotions.

Talking about childhood music: A twin study

To what extent do childhood experiences of music practice influence thinking about music later in life? In this contribution, 27-54-year-old monozygotic twins discordant with regard to piano playing in life were interviewed about music experiences during childhood and adult years. Recordings of heart rate variability were performed continuously during the interviews which were done separately with playing and nonplaying cotwins. Random factors had determined whether the twin chose to play or not. The rationale behind using monozygotic twins was that this offered a possibility to account totally for genetic influence. The physiological recordings in general showed small intrapair differences. However, during the initial discussion about how the difference arose in piano practice during childhood, the nonplaying twin used more time and showed evidence of a stronger sympathetic activation than the cotwin. These findings are discussed against the background of musics importance in childhood.