Significance: Here we present a data set demonstrating that musical agency greatly decreases the perceived exertion during strenuous activity. We believe these findings are a major contribution to how we consider the role of music in the emergence of human societies. Furthermore, these findings are timely because they crucially help to understand the therapeutic power of music, a scientific field about to unfold. Although one would expect this workout with musical feedback (jymmin') to be a rather unconventional and dimensionally constrained (each instrument one-dimensionally regulates a musical signal) way to experience musical agency, the experience of the performers suggests an intimate entwinement of ecstatic pleasure and exertion during the performance.

Musical interventions in therapy have become increasingly relevant for rehabilitation in many clinics. What was long known for physiotherapy training—that the agency of the participant is crucial and moving is much more efficient for rehabilitation success than being moved—has over recent years also been shown to be true for music therapy. Accumulating evidence suggests that active musical interventions are especially efficient at helping rehabilitation success. Here, we review various approaches to active music therapy. Furthermore, we present several components that allow for manipulating musical expressiveness and physical engagement during active musical interventions, applying a technology-based music feedback paradigm. This paper will allow for a transfer of insights to other domains of music-based therapeutic interventions.

Music making has a number of beneficial effects for motor tasks compared to passive music listening. Given that recent research suggests that high energy musical activities elevate positive affect more strongly than low energy musical activities, we here investigated a recent method that combined music making with systematically increasing physiological arousal by exercise machine workout. We compared mood and anxiety after two exercise conditions on non-cyclical exercise machines, one with passive music listening and the other with musical feedback (where participants could make music with the exercise machines). The results showed that agency during exercise machine workout (an activity we previously labeled jymmin—a cross between jammin and gym) had an enhancing effect on mood compared to workout with passive music listening. Furthermore, the order in which the conditions were presented mediated the effect of musical agency for this subscale When participants first listened passively, the difference in mood between the two conditions was greater, suggesting that a stronger increase in hormone levels (e.g. endorphins) during the active condition may have caused the observed effect. Given an enhanced mood after training with musical feedback compared to passively listening to the same type of music during workout, the results suggest that exercise machine workout with musical feedback (jymmin) makes the act of exercise machine training more desirable.

Objectives: When physical exercise is systematically coupled to music production, exercisers experience improvements in mood, reductions in perceived effort, and enhanced muscular efficiency. The physiology underlying these positive effects remains unknown. Here we approached the investigation of how such musical agency may stimulate the release of endogenous opioids indirectly with a pain threshold paradigm. Design: In a cross-over design we tested the opioid-hypothesis with an indirect measure, comparing the pain tolerance of 22 participants following exercise with or without musical agency. Method: Physical exercise was coupled to music by integrating weight-training machines with sensors that control music-synthesis in real time. Pain tolerance was measured as withdrawal time in a cold pressor test. Results: On average, participants tolerated cold pain for ~5 s longer following exercise sessions with musical agency. Musical agency explained 25% of the variance in cold pressor test withdrawal times after factoring out individual differences in general pain sensitivity. Conclusions: This result demonstrates a substantial pain reducing effect of musical agency in combination with physical exercise, probably due to stimulation of endogenous opioid mechanisms. This has implications for exercise endurance, both in sports and a multitude of rehabilitative therapies in which physical exercise is effective but painful.

An understanding about the biological roots of music may be vital to the study of human evolution. Here we first review ideas on drumming and song as homologous traits of the human capacity for music, and then point out another possible homology of this capacity: A neurological physiology supporting acoustically mediated emotional contagion. A key aspect of this argument is that acoustically mediated emotionally contagious behaviours in our closest phylogenetic relatives (play panting and pant hoots in African great apes) are structurally and functionally related to laughter and music in humans. We conclude that the musical capacity in humans may have evolved as a response to selective pressures for increased group size for its effect of synchronizing group motivation and emotional experience through acoustically mediated emotional contagion, and as such would have promoted group gatherings, social functions and the establishment of rituals.