Abstract:

Human brain hears music in many different aspects. How many factors a man can hear depends how much musically he/she is. Relative to music sensitivity, human can recognize tempo, key, dynamics, rhythm, modulation of the songs. The study is dedicated to the analysis of the music impact on human concentration. One of the possibilities of human concentration data collecting is electroencephalographic signal (EEG) measured during solving mid-difficult problems. For this studies, to collect data, Mitsar 210 electroencephalograph and dedicated game were used. Two scenarios were develop: first, provided for measuring without music, and the second one – for measuring with music background. Both scenarios used a dedicated game considering the patient's ability to perform tasks that require cognitive skills. The game envisaged 90 tasks, of which a single one consisted of two figures: a 3 symbols question board to memorize and an answer with one symbol. Symbols were placed on a 2x2 board. If the symbol in the answer figure was in the same position as in the question board, the test participants were supposed to click the right mouse button. The first scenario was performed in silence while the second scenario provided a musical background. The music presented in the second scenario was divided into 3 fragments. Each one took 1:33 minutes and was varied for composition. The first presented music fragment was sad, second – cheerful, third - chaotic. All songs presented instrumental music versions without words. Measure of concentration was described as amount of correct and wrong answers during game play as well as EEG evoked potential and EEG spectra-based features were analyzed. The study was conducted on 6 men aged approx. 24 year old. Based on interview after trails, three sample persons were musically active, and another three – weren’t. The results showed that music had a little impact on making decisions and challenging thesis about negative influence on concentration.

The study was performed as a student project. Tests were performed in Laboratory of Motion Analysis and Interface Ergonomics, which is located at Lublin University of Technology in Poland.

Keywords:

EEG, evoked potentials, concentration study.