Brain-Body Coupling in Listening to Metronomic Sounds and Music

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering
• Physiology

Background:

• Wearable technology advances multimodal sensing for brain-body state estimation.
• Understanding cross-modal coupling mechanisms in brain-body systems is limited.
• Holistic brain-body state estimation requires integrating diverse biosignals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate brain-body coupling using simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), and respiratory measurements.
• To analyze the entrainment of physiological rhythms to auditory stimuli.
• To explore frequency coupling across multiple biosignals during rhythmic auditory exposure.

Main Methods:

• Collected simultaneous EEG, ECG, and respiratory data during an auditory stimulation experiment.
• Used isochronous cues and self-selected music as auditory stimuli.
• Applied Magnitude-Squared coherence analysis to assess frequency coupling between biosignals.

Main Results:

• Cardiac rhythms demonstrated clear entrainment to the underlying beat of auditory stimuli (music and metronome).
• Magnitude-Squared coherence analysis revealed frequency coupling across ECG, EEG, and respiratory signals.
• Peak coherence was observed near the heard beat or its harmonics, indicating brain-body entrainment.

Conclusions:

• Auditory rhythmic stimuli can entrain cardiac and neural rhythms, demonstrating significant brain-body coupling.
• Findings support the potential for developing adaptive music therapy and biofeedback interventions.
• Validating simplified measurement approaches for brain-body entrainment can enhance clinical rhythmic interventions.