Exploring EEG and ECG in Music Listening: A Scoping Review

Music listening, a common daily activity recognized for its emotional impact and ability to evoke memories, engages physiological and psychological processes. Concurrent electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) during music listening can inform our understanding of these processes. However, the insights offered by such simultaneous recordings, and the extent to which existing studies align with published methodological guidelines, remain unclear. To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed research examining physiological responses to passive music listening using combined EEG and ECG measures in healthy adult non-musicians. A structured search of five databases identified 18 papers. Data on methods, participant demographics, musical stimuli, and EEG/ECG measures were extracted and compared against established guidelines to clarify the studies' methodological rigor. EEG findings were highly heterogeneous, spanning spectral power, lateralized effects, and event-related potentials, with limited overlap in analytical focus. Cardiac outcomes were similarly mixed, with studies reporting increases, decreases, or no change in heart rate depending on stimulus and context. Only a small subset of studies examined brain-heart coupling directly, with preliminary evidence of synchronization between neural and cardiac rhythms during music listening, leaving the central question of how brain and heart respond together to music largely open. Our review identified significant methodological inconsistencies and a lack of integration between the two measures, highlighting the challenges of this interdisciplinary research. Advancing research in both music and psychophysiology requires improving alignment between methodologies from these distinct areas by following established standards. These findings highlight a critical need for greater methodological standardization to build a more reliable and replicable understanding of music's psychophysiological effects.