BBC News, Rebecca
Morelle, Science reporter, 9 July 2013
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| Scientists say choir members are so well attuned, their heartbeats are also synchronised |
Researchers
in Sweden monitored the heart rates of singers as they performed a variety of
choral works.
They found
that as the members sang in unison, their pulses began to speed up and slow
down at the same rate.
Writing in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, the scientists believe the synchrony
occurs because the singers coordinate their breathing.
Dr Bjorn
Vickhoff, from the Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University in Sweden,
said: "The pulse goes down when you exhale and when you inhale it goes up.
"So
when you are singing, you are singing on the air when you are exhaling so the
heart rate would go down. And between the phrases you have to inhale and the
pulse will go up.
"If
this is so then heart rate would follow the structure of the song or the
phrases, and this is what we measured and this is what we confirmed."
Sing from
the heart
The
scientists studied 15 choir members as they performed different types of songs.
They found
that the more structured the work, the more the singers' heart rates increased
or decreased together.
Slow
chants, for example, produced the most synchrony.
The
researchers also found that choral singing had the overall effect of slowing
the heart rate.
This, they
said, was another effect of the controlled breathing.
Dr Vickhoff
explained: "When you exhale you activate the vagus nerve, we think, that
goes from the brain stem to the heart. And when that is activated the heart
beats slower."
The
researchers now want to investigate whether singing could have an impact on our
health.
"There
have been studies on yoga breathing, which is very close to this, and also on
guided breathing and they have seen long-terms effects on blood pressure... and
they have seen that you can bring down your blood pressure.
"We
speculate that it is possible singing could also be beneficial."
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