Performing music can induce greater modulation of emotion-related psychophysiological responses than listening to music

The present study investigated the differential effects of music-induced emotion on heart rate (HR) and its variability (HRV) while playing music on the piano and listening to a recording of the same piece of music. Sixteen pianists were monitored during tasks involving emotional piano performance, non-emotional piano performance, emotional perception, and non-emotional perception. It was found that emotional induction during both perception and performance modulated HR and HRV, and that such modulations were significantly greater during musical performance than during perception. The results confirmed that musical performance was far more effective in modulating emotion-related autonomic nerve activity than musical perception in musicians. The findings suggest the presence of a neural network of reward-emotion-associated autonomic nerve activity for musical performance that is independent of a neural network for musical perception. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.