Effects of Movement Sonification Auditory Feedback on Repetitions and Brain Activity During the Bench Press

Garner, C, Nachtegall, A, Roth, E, Sterenberg, A, Kim, D, Michael, T, and Lee, S. Effects of movement sonification auditory feedback on repetitions and brain activity during the bench press. J Strength Cond Res 38(12): 2022-2028, 2024-Auditory stimulation and feedback have been found to enhance aspects of motor performance such as motor learning, sense of agency, and movement execution. While music is the most common form of auditory stimulation during exercise, movement sonification (MoSo) may better facilitate motor performance through its use of music elements representing dynamic movements. Despite evidence of MoSo's benefits to motor performance, little is known about MoSo's influence on resistance exercise. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of MoSo auditory feedback on repetitions and brain activity during bench press. Twenty men performed bench press to failure in 3 sound conditions (no-sound, self-selected music, and MoSo). Repetition maximum (RM) was measured, and brain activity was analyzed using beta power spectral density (PSD) and frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). A 1-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to compare data across sound conditions. To gain a deeper understanding of brain activity during bench press, a 2-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed to investigate changes in beta PSD and FAA over time using sound and timepoint as independent variables. A 1-way ANOVA showed that FAA in MoSo was significantly higher than in music and no-sound; however, no statistically significant differences were observed in RM and beta PSD between conditions. A 2-way ANOVA revealed that beta PSD and FAA increased significantly as bench press repetitions approached failure. Our study suggests that MoSo auditory feedback may not improve bench press repetitions, but it may increase brain activity during bench press better than listening to music.