Abstract

Thesis Abstract

The influences of moderate exercise and dissonant music on Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis activity was studied in 14 healthy individuals. Both moderate exercise and music are potent stimuli that influence HPA axis activity. Exercise and music have been used in clinical settings to help alleviate pain and improve quality of life among patients. The effects of music on hormonal release and cortisol levels depend on the type of music being used. The aim of this study was to better understand how cortisol levels were affected by dissonant music, which had not been studied as extensively as consonant music. To reduce the subjectivity aspect of music, a dissonant piece of music that was unfamiliar to participants was selected.
To gain a better understanding of the effects of moderate exercise and dissonant music on HPA axis activity, cortisol (an end product of the HPA axis) from the saliva samples of 14 participants was measured after random exposure to the following activities:
1. Moderate exercise (stationary cycling at 60% of VO2 max)
2. Listening to dissonant music
3. Listening to dissonant music during moderate exercise (stationary cycling at 60% of VO2 max)
4. Resting on stationary bike without pedaling and without listening to music
Saliva samples were collected prior to and at specific time intervals after the intervention. Salivary cortisol was measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of the four variable activities and variable time. Both variables, activity and time, were within-subject factors. The potential significance of the interaction of the two variables, activity and time was also studied. The effect of variable activity was not statistically significant, as repeated F-tests uniformly displayed p-values well above the significance level of 0.05. However, a significant main effect of time was observed. Salivary cortisol levels changed across time points. Salivary cortisol levels decreased over time in each group. Time had a significant effect on the salivary cortisol level, with F (2, 26) = 9.216 and p-value=.001, according to the F-test assuming sphericity. Music was not statistically significant, with F (1,12) = 0.162 and p-value = 0.695.These findings suggest that moderate exercise and pre-selected musical stimuli had no effect on HPA axis activity as indicated by cortisol levels in young, healthy adults.

Keywords: music, dissonant, moderate exercise, HPA axis, salivary cortisol