Wearable Sensors to Monitor Psychophysiological Response Induced by Musical Consonance and Dissonance

Over the last decades, wearable sensors have been increasingly used for measuring psychophysiological responses in various fields ranging from art, music, sport, and occupational and clinical settings. Several studies have investigated humans' psychophysiological changes elicited by a wide variety of external stimuli, including auditory stimuli. Most of the research in this area has monitored the electrocardiogram (ECG) and electrodermal responses to investigate whether and how auditory parameters affect the heart rate (HR) and the skin conductance (SCR). These physiological changes can be easily monitored by using wearables. Moreover, other physiological parameters, such as HR variability (HRV) and respiratory rate (RR), can also be investigated by proposing a multi-sensor wearable approach. In this pilot study, we used wearables to monitor psychophysiological changes occurring in response to music stimuli with different harmonic features. Two subjects (one musician and one nonmusician) were invited to listen to a small set of consonant and dissonant musical excerpts. During listening, participants' HR, HRV, SCR, and RR were continuously monitored. Results showed that some of the parameters vary with consonance/dissonance, while others seem to be not affected. Allowing to obtain reliable psychophysiological data with a relatively simple setup, such wearable systems could be easily implemented to run experimental protocols in less-structured and more ecological settings (e.g., auditoriums, concert halls) with larger samples.