Analysis of the Movement-Inducing Effects of Music through the Fractality of Head Sway during Standstill

Abstract

The links between music and human movement have been shown to provide insight into crucial aspects of human's perception, cognition, and sensorimotor systems. In this study, we examined the influence of music on movement during standstill by analyzing head sway fractality, with the aim of further characterizing the correspondences between movement, music, and cognition. Eighty seven participants were asked to stand as still as possible for 500 seconds while being presented with alternating silence and musical stimuli. The auditory stimuli were all rhythmic in nature, ranging from a metronome track to complex electronic dance music. The head position of each participant was captured with an optical motion capture system. Long-range correlations of head movement were estimated by detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). The results support findings from previous work on the movement-inducing effect of music, showing significantly greater head sway and lower head sway fractality during the music stimuli. In addition, the patterns across stimuli suggest that there is a two-way adaptation process, with the music stimuli influencing head sway while at the same time fractality modulated movement responses. The results indicate that fluctuations in head movement in both conditions exhibit long-range correlations, suggesting that the effects of music on head movement depended not only on the value of the most recent measured intervals, but also on the values of those intervals at distant times.

Headphones or Speakers? An Exploratory Study of Their Effects on Spontaneous Body Movement to Rhythmic Music

“…We did not find a significant effect of the rhythmic complexity on the movement responses. While this may seem surprising, it is in line with the results from a different study using the same stimuli (González Sánchez et al, 2019). One explanation for the lack of significance here may be that it is primarily the presence of a steady beat that drives the spontaneous movement responses.…”

“…We have studied micromotion using an experimental paradigm in which subjects are asked to stand still on the floor while listening to music (Jensenius et al, 2017). From these studies we have found that people's micromotion is on average higher when listening to music than when they stand still in silence, even when they deliberately try not to move (Jensenius et al, 2017;González Sánchez et al, 2018;González Sánchez et al, 2019). Different types of music seem to influence the micromotion in various ways.…”

“…Previous studies on body movement to music have investigated different body segments (Luck et al, 2010;, movements of the head (Hurley et al, 2014;Kilchenmann and Senn, 2015;González Sánchez et al, 2018;González Sánchez et al, 2019), and Center of Mass (CoM) or Center of Pressure (CoP) Ross et al, 2016). In posturography studies, CoM is one of the most widely used measures of postural stability (Winter, 2009).…”

“…Based on findings from previous studies (Jensenius et al, 2017;González Sánchez et al, 2018;González Sánchez et al, 2019), we decided to focus on using EDM-like tracks in the present study. This is a musical genre that is designed specifically for making people want to dance, and is characterized by a flat-four rhythmic pattern and a synthesizer-based melody and accompaniment (Solberg and Jensenius, 2017).…”

“…We have been interested in understanding more about how music may induce body movement also when people try not to move. Using a "standstill" paradigm, we have shown that music may lead to spontaneous body movement, albeit at a very small scale (Jensenius et al, 2017;González Sánchez et al, 2018;González Sánchez et al, 2019). These studies have been done using loudspeakers as the playback method of the music stimuli.…”