Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 03, 2017 - September 06, 2017
In recent years, the number of people who suffer from dementia has increased as the aging population increases. Since a standard method for the treatment of dementia has not been developed, there has been an attempt to combine the treatment of dementia with complementary and alternative medicine. Among complementary and alternative medicine methods, music therapy has attracted attention because of its low risk of side effects. Currently, group therapy is the mainstream of music therapy in Japan because of insufficient number of music therapists. As a result, care for individuals has not been sufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to provide pleasant music for each patient that can be automated. For this reason, a music selection system is required, and this system can be realized by measuring emotions using biological information such as brain activity. In this study, we analyzed brain activity while listening to classical music using near infrared spectroscopy. In our experiment, participants listened to four types of music with different characteristics. The results show that the oxy-Hb rises when participants feel uncomfortable, while the oxy-Hb decreases when participants dislike the music. This indicates that emotions and preferences while listening to music can be identified using brain activity.
