Morphological Variations in ECG During Music-Induced Change in Consciousness

In these experiments, the state of mind was changed using music to a group of subjects susceptible to aesthetic appreciation, a phenomena alternatively known as musicogenic epilepsy. The change in EEG is characterized by large number of spikes, symptomatic to epilepsy, along with a change in the background EEG. The fractal dimension of EEG was found to reduce during epoch period. It was also noted that, morphological changes in ECG occur during some part of the epoch period. This change is characterized by the increase in height of the QRS complex and considerable reduction in the height of T-wave; indeed the latter gradually vanishes and appears again slowly. The heart rate variability (HRV) analysis of the epoch and nonepoch periods show increased height of the second peak (0.05-0.15 Hz) as well as higher ratio of the second to third peak (0.18-0.45 Hz) possibly suggesting mild sympathetic burst on the autonomic system (ANS). Pole-tracking algorithm, using linearization method, shows that the poles move considerably around their initial positions during epoch period where as the movement of poles are very little during nonepoch