How auditory sensations affect human emotional responses to acoustic environments.

Listening to music often leads to physiological responses. Do these physiological responses contain sufficient information to infer emotion induced in the listener? The current study explores this question by attempting to predict judgments of “felt” emotion from physiological responses alone using linear and neural network models. We measured five channels of peripheral physiology from 20 participants—heart rate (HR), respiration, galvanic skin response, and activity in corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major facial muscles. Using valence and arousal (VA) dimensions, participants rated their felt emotion after listening to each of 12 classical music excerpts. After extracting features from the five channels, we examined their correlation with VA ratings, and then performed multiple linear regression to see if a linear relationship between the physiological responses could account for the ratings. Although linear models predicted a significant amount of variance in arousal ratings, they were unable to do so with valence ratings. We then used a neural network to provide a non-linear account of the ratings. The network was trained on the mean ratings of eight of the 12 excerpts and tested on the remainder. Performance of the neural network confirms that physiological responses alone can be used to predict musically induced emotion. The non-linear model derived from the neural network was more accurate than linear models derived from multiple linear regression, particularly along the valence dimension. A secondary analysis allowed us to quantify the relative contributions of inputs to the non-linear model. The study represents a novel approach to understanding the complex relationship between physiological responses and musically induced emotion.

Pre-exam anxiety is a very common feeling among university students that manifests at cognitive, behavioural, and physiological levels. It affects between 15 and 25% of students, generating avoidance behaviours towards evaluation, which can result in dropping out of school. The development of biofeedback-based devices that relay visual and auditory feedback on physiological symptoms, offers new options for individual programmes. Said devices can help a person acquire greater control over the bodily function that is being monitored and are currently being used in many fields. It is therefore worth assessing the effectiveness of this technology at processing information on the objective physiological response to anxiety in study situations. Furthermore, universities could develop health programmes implementing this technology to improve students’ quality of life. During the biofeedback sessions, the aim is to collect physiological measures of the anxiety response before and after two independent preventive psychological programmes. It is also intended to assess the presence of differences between physiological and subjective data through questionnaires with Likert-type scales. Two experimental groups were formed for this quasi-experimental applied research: G1 (19 students), Students participating in a Self-Control and Study Techniques Programme; and G2 (12 students), Students participating in the Test Anxiety Control Programme. Their objective physiological responses were evaluated in two biofeedback sessions: pre-test (before the start of the programmes) and post-test (after their completion) (4 weeks for G1 and 12 weeks for G2). The biofeedback device used was Neurobit Optima 4 + BT. The inclusion criteria were: (1) age of majority (18 years); (2) voluntary participation in the programs offered by the University Health Care Service of the University of Burgos; (3) signing the informed consent form. A P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Twenty-two adults divided into G1 (12 students, 1 man and 11 women) and G2 (10 students, 1 men and 9 women) completed the programmes. The mean age and Standard Deviation (SD) of G1 and G2 were, respectively, 24.20 (6.93) years old and 25.00 (6.22) years old. There were significant temporal differences between measurement sessions (all P < 0.045). G1 presented significantly different galvanic skin responses (all P < 0.011) that tended to peak; G2 presented significantly different muscular tension and galvanic skin responses (all P < 0.037), both in total and by phases, showing progressively lower muscular tension, and galvanic skin responses that tended to peak. In G1, significant links were noted both between the items of the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) and the galvanic skin responses monitored during the pre-test session (r = 0.229; P = 0.012) and between the items of the Test Anxiety Inventory and the galvanic skin responses monitored during the post-test data-collection session (r = 0.201; P = 0.028). In G2, significant links were noted between the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory items and both muscular tension (r = 0.278; P = 0.005) and the galvanic skin response in the pre-test data-collection session (r = 0.258; P = 0.010) and between the TAI items and the galvanic skin response in the post-test data-collection session (r = − 0.232; P = 0.020). Most participants reported useful and interesting biofeedback experiences. Promising preliminary evidence is advanced in this study on the effectiveness of biofeedback as a tool for monitoring and relaying objective physiological data to participants in real time. The significance of these results should be examined in future research in which the emotional reactions of students facing test-related anxiety may be monitored for the subsequent development of therapeutic programmes.

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There is increasing recognition of the importance of the quality of life (QOL) since it became an endpoint of clinical practices, a variety of disease-specific quality of life instruments have been developed and used as a means of assessing clinical interventions. Traditional evaluation was performed by researchers who generally ignore the subjective feeling from patiens. At present, many evaluation criteria has paid more attention to the patient's subjective feelings into the scoring system, the assessment tool of patient-reported outcome (PRO) is usually the patient self-rating scale or questionnaire. As a common complications of terminal stages of cancer, the treatment of bone metastases is usually conservative, improving or maintaining the quality of life of patients has been the consensus. Bone metastases trials have employed QLQ-C30 which raised by Europe Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) or other generic health related QOL measurement, such as functional assessment of cancer therapy-general (FACT-G) and the MOS 36-item short from health survey (SF-36). But they lack specificity and accuracy in the assessment. EORTC QLQ-BM22 scale is considered as a bone metastases specific scale which was introducted in 2009, after the reliability, validity, cross-cultural adaptability verification, with the combination of EORTC QLQ-C30 or used alone, has increasingly applied to clinical trials and practice for QOL assessment of bone metastatic cancer patients in recent years. It complete the EORTC evaluation system, which has significant value for assessing efficacy. EORTC QLQ-BM22 has been translated into simplified Chinese and evaluated its utility, could be used in China as an effective questionnaire in evaluating the QOL for patients with bone metastases. In this study, current situation and progress of QOL measuring tools for bone metastases patients is reviewed, in order to help researchers choose appropriate scale and better assess the efficacy, find the pros and cons to guide the clinical treatment decision.

Acoustic environment has significant impacts on humans' feelings and emotions, cognitive performance, and behaviours. It evokes both physiological and psychological responses, which in the long term affect physical and mental health. It has been long believed that physiological and psychological responses are interconnected, yet their correlations are complex and may vary among conditions and studies. This present research study explores the physiological and psychological responses at the exposure to acoustic environment in a short period of time, and examines whether the physiological responses are able to predict the psychological responses. In this research, the physiological and psychological responses of subjects to a set of soundscapes are collected in a laboratory setting, by respectively continuous physiological measurements and self-report ratings on subjective experiences. The connections between the physiological and psychological responses are examined using machine learning methods. The results show the connections between physiological and psychological responses to soundscape. To a certain degree, it is able to predict the psychological responses from the measured physiological responses.

We examined the emotional effects of (a) a rising versus a falling chromatic tone sequence in the background of audio news and (b) foreground versus background diatonic and chromatic tone sequences. In experiment one, 26 participants rated audio news messages with rising and falling chromatic background tone sequences on the valence and arousal dimensions. Cardiac activity, electrodermal activity (EDA), and facial muscle activity were also recorded continuously. In experiment two, 24 participants rated six plain tone sequences ( i.e., rising and falling chromatic, major, and minor) and six news messages with the aforementioned tone sequences mixed in the background on the valence and arousal dimensions. In experiment 1, both self-reported arousal and physiological arousal as measured by EDA were higher during the news with a rising-tone sequence compared to those with a falling-tone sequence. In experiment 2, rising-tone sequences prompted both higher arousal and pleasantness ratings. However, the responses were moderated by the type of listening task: foreground listening prompted responses related to musical connotations ( i.e., major tone sequences were rated as most pleasant and minor as most unpleasant), whereas background listening prompted responses dependent on the emotional congruence between the news messages and tone sequences ( i.e., the minor mode versions were rated as most pleasant and the major mode versions as most unpleasant). In addition, level of education-, music listening frequency-, and age-related differences in the responses were found and are discussed.

This study's purpose is to introduce a new measurement system that objectively assesses the social validity of behavioral feeding intervention from the child's perspective via the concurrent measurement of two dimensions of emotion. To date, the primary measures of social validity for behavioral feeding intervention are caregiver treatment acceptability and satisfaction surveys. This is the first study to objectively measure two dimensions of emotion, physiological arousal and emotional valence, while children received behavioral intervention for feeding difficulties. Data collectors used a new open‐source data collection software, cometrics, developed to synchronize and record physiological and observational data. Physiological data was collected using a wearable biosensor and observers recorded an index of child happiness, unhappiness, or neither using definitions by Phipps et al. (2022) for six children with a pediatric feeding disorder. Two out of six children needed programmed habituation to the device before data collection. All children assented to wearing the device during data collection. Recorded indices mapped to separable physiological states using electrodermal activity and its constituent components, skin conductance responses and skin conductance level, in addition to skin temperature. Findings demonstrated the feasibility of measuring two dimensions of child emotions during behavioral feeding intervention and revealed that children's physiological responses were distinctly different during intervals scored as happy, unhappy, or neither. This new data collection system has implications for future research on the child's emotional experience of behavioral feeding treatment and increases the possibilities for improving clinical practice.

Emotion is characterized by dimensions of affective valence and arousal, either or both of which may be altered by sleep loss, thereby contributing to impaired regulatory functioning. Controlled laboratory studies of total sleep deprivation (TSD) generally show alterations in physiological arousal and affective state, but the relationship of affect and emotion with physiological arousal during TSD has not been well characterized. Established methods for examining physiological arousal include electrodermal activity (EDA) measures such as non-specific skin conductance responses (NSSCR) and skin conductance level (SCL). These measures are robust physiological markers of sympathetic arousal and have been linked to changes in experienced emotion. To explore the link between physiological arousal and affect during sleep deprivation, we investigated individuals’ EDA under TSD and its relationship to self-reported affect. We also investigated the relationship of EDA to two other measures known to be particularly sensitive to the arousal-decreasing effects of TSD, i.e., self-reported sleepiness and performance on a vigilant attention task. Data were drawn from three previously published laboratory experiments where participants were randomly assigned to either well-rested control (WRC) or 38 h of TSD. In this data set, comprising one of the largest samples ever used in an investigation of TSD and EDA (N = 193 with 74 WRC and 119 TSD), we found the expected impairing effects of TSD on self-reported affect and sleepiness and on vigilant attention. Furthermore, we found that NSSCR, but not SCL, were sensitive to TSD, with significant systematic inter-individual differences. Across individuals, the change in frequency of NSSCR during TSD was not predictive of the effect of TSD on affect, sleepiness, or vigilant attention, nor was it related to these outcomes during the rested baseline. Our findings indicate that while physiological arousal, as measured by EDA, may be useful for assessing TSD-related changes in non-specific arousal at the group level, it is not associated with individuals’ self-reported affect at rest nor their change in affect during TSD. This suggests that an essential aspect of the relationship between physiological arousal and self-reported affect is not well captured by EDA as measured by NSSCR.

Differing associations of depersonalization with physiological response during rest and breath-focused mindfulness in a trauma-exposed female population

Product sounds with clearly audible tonal components are often perceived as unpleasant or annoying. If different simultaneously operating aggregates are present in a system, for example vehicle engines and gearboxes, the interaction of tonal components, similar to music, can evoke additional sensations in human auditory perception. Supplementary to a pronounced tonality, such sounds can also yield distinct degrees of consonance or dissonance between tones. Previous studies showed that the perceived dissonance had a high impact on preference judgements for sounds with similar tonality. In experiments of the present study, sounds that differed in tonality were rated with respect to the auditory sensations sharpness, tonality and dissonance by one group of participants while another group only carried out a preference task. Thereout a model for predicting perceived preference is derived from the subjective judgements of auditory sensations. The performance of the preference predictions based on subjective judgements will be compared against purely model-based predictions using different algorithms for acoustic attributes.

Bone is among the most common metastasis sites in patients with advanced cancer. Approximately two-thirds of bone metastasis results in pain, the majority of which is moderate to unbearable pain, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients. With the development of ablation techniques, microwave ablation (MWA) has great potential to eliminate the pain caused by bone metastasis. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of image-guided (computed tomography-guided) percutaneous MWA for metastatic osseous pain. This is a retrospective study involving 18 patients with cancer-related pain caused by osseous or soft tissue metastasis in the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University from June 2015 to October 2020. All patients (14 men and 4 women; mean age 60.2 years) underwent image-guided percutaneous palliative MWA. A paired-sample t-test was used to compare the changes in Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) score and dosage of morphine preoperatively and postoperatively (at 24 h, 3 days, and 14 days after MWA). In addition, we assessed the level of pain relief according to the patients' subjective feelings. The paired-samples t-test showed that the NRS score (6.83±0.92 vs. 1.67±0.97, P<0.05) and dosage of morphine (85.56±17.23 vs. 32.78±4.61, P<0.05) were significantly decreased at 3 days after MWA. At 14 days after MWA, the NRS score (6.83±0.92 vs. 0.94±0.87, P<0.05) and dosage of morphine (85.56±17.23 vs. 10.56±8.73, P<0.05) were also markedly decreased. Moreover, according to the patients' subjective feeling, 88.89% patients had pain relief postoperatively, while the remaining patients had no progress. Image-guided (Computed Tomography-guided) percutaneous MWA can effectively relieve pain, thus improving the quality of life in patients with osseous metastasis. MWA is a feasible, safe, and effective treatment for pain caused by bone metastasis.

In this work, an attempt has been made to discriminate arousal and valence dimensions in Electrodermal Activity (EDA) signals using Spiking Deep Belief Network (SDBN). EDA signals having different arousal and valence dimensions are obtained from public online database. These signals are divided into equal parts and normalized using channel normalization. Later, signals are subjected to SDBN for event-related features and classification. A leave-one-out cross validation is used to investigate the classification performance. The result shows that the SDBN classifiers are able to discriminate the emotional states. The network yields better classification performance for emotional dimensions of arousal and valence. It appears that the proposed approach can be used to differentiate autonomic and pathological conditions.

This paper establishes a procedure for the evaluation of human hearing perception in indoor spaces by jury testing. An artificial head system was used to record indoor noise and to determine physical acoustic and psychoacoustic parameters within living and working environments. This test involved a jury consisting of 102 people of different ages, genders and occupations. The subjects participated in the sound quality evaluation and from this; indicators of human perception to sound were obtained. Three types of residential spaces in which to carry out the jury test were selected, including a high-rise apartment, a general residential apartment and a small apartment suite. A workspace in the form of a medium-sized meeting room was also tested. The paired comparison method and the category judgment method were both utilized in the jury test questionnaire. The paired comparison method was used to evaluate the psychoacoustic perception of loudness and sharpness, while the category judgment method applied a seven-point scale. Psychoacoustic parameters were used to analyze human hearing responses; from these, perceived sound quality was established for each subject. Through this testing procedure, a reasonable sound quality evaluation method was established.

Event-related skin conductance responses to musical emotions in humans

This study investigates the effects of a virtual biophilic residential environment on seniors’ physiological and subjective responses to evaluate its potential to promote healing and recovery. Thirty seniors were exposed to three different scales (units, buildings, complexes) of virtual biophilic residential environments that combined both physical and digital biophilic elements. Physiological responses, including heart rate, heart rate variability, and galvanic skin response, were measured alongside self-reported levels of satisfaction and immersion. The primary objective was to assess the effectiveness of physical and digital design interventions at each residential scale. The findings revealed that the virtual biophilic residential environment reduced physiological stress in seniors, with the most significant impact observed at the unit scale. Digital design interventions further enhance stress relief benefits, indicating that integrating physical and digital elements in biophilic residential environments can positively influence seniors’ stress levels. Additionally, significant correlations were identified between physiological responses and subjective perceptions of immersion and satisfaction. This study is valuable as an initial comparative analysis of the effectiveness of physical and digital approaches in biophilic design. This paper is a preliminary study and is significant in that it systematizes virtual environment research from an age-friendly perspective and expands approaches to biophilic design.