Evidence-based music for human health

Music improves human health while modern societies fail to make an effective useof music for human health. This is because previous researches have lacked a point ofevidence-based music. Here, we suggest evidence-based music, which we expect asvaluable as evidence-based medicine in the modern society.In order to reach evidence-based music, we have to have a clear quantitativeunderstanding of human responses to music. Toward an understanding of humanresponses to music, we hypothesize human as a black box with input and output, and thenwe analyze human responses as a function of input onto output. Our research shows thefollowing three characteristics. The first characteristic is that our research requiresprofound interdisciplinary knowledge in the three distinguished research fields that aremusic theory, acoustic engineering, and medicine. Other characteristic is that our researchanalyses biological information in two aspects, one is objective data (biological reaction),and the other is subjective data (emotional reaction). The last characteristic is that ourresearch utilizes two kinds of music analysis methods; one is a method of music theoryand the other is a method of acoustic engineering. Our research is composed of tworesearch themes, (1) Music therapy for dementia patients: Tuned for culture differences,and (2) Effect of music upon awakening for comfortable awakening. rapid changes of cerebral blood flow than normal volunteers, which suggestsdementia patients face weakened control of their blood flow.Based on our results, we assume music therapy using Japanese music is moreeffective than conventional music therapy for Japanese dementia patients.(2) Effect of music upon awakening for comfortable awakeningWe analyzed comfort of forced awakening in relation of the brain and music. Here,we propose two hypotheses that (a) awakening by music is more comfortable thanawakening by alarm tone sounds, and (b) comfort of awakening is dependent onsleep cycle and circadian rhythm.In this research, we collected subjective data by three psychological tests for 15volunteers and objective data by EEG for five volunteers. Our results are as follows:(a) awakening by music feels more comfortable, and (b) sleep rhythm and thecircadian rhythm influence awakening comfort.