Abstract
This paper studies how the musical-rhythmic features affect the performance of heart rate variability (HRV). A physiological valence/arousal model of such a relationship is proposed. A systematic experiment was performed, subjecting human subjects to four different drum loops, in which was tried to define a set of rhythmic features (and factors) that could be correlated with the observed HRV readings. Twenty-two healthy subjects and these four testing rhythm patterns were studied in this paper. The results show that dedicated rhythm can be synthesized for relaxing and exciting, and such an understanding between music and autonomic nervous system can improve life and health by the next generation of biomedical entertainment platform. © 2011 IEEE.