Physiological Correlates of Active Music-making and Passive Listening in Music Based Interventions

Music therapy (MT) interventions are a cost-effective, accessible, and holistic treatment option with social, rhythmic, creative, sensorimotor, and respiratory components, giving them the potential to improve the quality of life for a diverse array of disorders. Despite this, the literature surrounding MT is controversial due to the lack of standardization in clinical and research practice. Interventions range from passive listening of participant selected music to clinician lead improvisational sessions. This inhibits a mechanistic understanding of how MT functions, and what components produce therapeutic effects. Controlled studies that target physiological outcomes are vital for the development of evidence-based MT treatments.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability for U.S. and affects more than 16 million Americans each year. Existing interventions struggle to combat this societal burden and fail to reach the large number of treatment resistant patients, creating an urgent need for the development of new treatment paradigms. Hyperactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) have been implicated in MDD. Listening to music has been shown to alter stress hormone levels and heart rate variability (HRV), physiological correlates of the HPA axis and ANS respectively. Active music-making's effects on these correlates has yet to be studied. Since active musical engagement involves multiple sensory inputs-proprioceptive and motor in addition to auditory-it has the potential to heighten physiological changes associated with listening to music alone. By contrasting a structured participation MT intervention with a listening control, the investigators will target the effects of active participation in music-making as a potential treatment for MDD.