Autonomic entrainment to music structure in Verdi opera

Music can influence bodily rhythms, offering a powerful way of modulating autonomic physiology. Entrainment between music structure and physiologic responses provides a potential mechanism for this effect. This study examined (1) whether autonomic entrainment is driven primarily by objective music structure or by listeners' subjective perception of music boundaries and (2) how structural and dynamic features of opera shape entrainment.

Twenty-four participants (12 choristers, 12 non-choristers) listened to two Verdi excerpts while respiration, RR intervals, and continuous blood pressure were recorded. Entrainment between music features (loudness and tempo) and physiology was assessed using time-frequency coherence, revealing significant intra- and inter-individual coupling, strongest during Nabucco. Surrogate testing confirmed that these effects were linked to music structure rather than incidental physiologic fluctuations. Music boundaries were modelled as Gaussian envelopes derived from participant-defined (subjective) annotations and trained-annotator (objective) annotations. Objective boundary envelopes aligned more closely with physiologic envelopes than subjective annotations across signals. Subjective boundary performance improved when restricted to higher-strength annotations and when closely matching music structural changes. Choristers' boundary annotations were more consistent within the group, but overall physiology-music entrainment strength was similar between choristers and non-choristers.

Music structure plays a key role in shaping autonomic entrainment. Autonomic entrainment during music listening is most consistently explained by music structure changes, particularly well-defined and salient boundaries (objective annotations), rather than by an individual's perception of structure changes (subjective annotations). These findings support a scalable framework for music-based interventions grounded in extractable structural features rather than personalized perception.