Music on the Brain: Examining the Relationship Between Music Performance Anxiety, Mindfulness, and Brain Activity

Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a debilitating condition affecting musicians at all levels. It has cognitive, physiological, and behavioural implications and greatly affects musicians’ professional and personal lives. Although there are studies that have documented mindfulness’ effects on MPA, no study has examined the relationship between brief mindfulness training and the neurophysiological, psychological, and behavioural effects of MPA, offering a more comprehensive picture. Indeed, using fMRI provides an objective view of the effects of mindfulness on the wellbeing of musicians with MPA. In the current study, mindfulness demonstrated positive psychological, neurophysiological, and behavioural effects in musicians with MPA. Brain regions related to attention and emotion regulation are thought to underly these findings. For example, in Study 1, a social-evaluative anxiety-provoking fMRI task was used to examine the neural activity and subjective anxiety levels associated with mindfulness training in musicians with MPA. This study found that brief mindfulness training led to increased activity in areas related to attention and emotion regulation, and subjective anxiety levels decreased from pre- to post-mindfulness training in the mindfulness group. For Study 2, a commonly used working memory task, a letter n-back task, was used to measure the neurophysiological and behavioural indices of working memory associated with mindfulness training in musicians with MPA. Results from Study 2 showed decreased neural activity in brain regions related to attention and faster reaction times in the mindfulness group at time 2. Finally, for Study 3, neural activity was measured at rest (resting state) in musicians with MPA who underwent brief mindfulness training and found decreased resting state functional connectivity between areas related to emotion regulation. This study demonstrates the association between brief mindfulness training and MPA via neural, psychological, and behavioural indices. These findings will be beneficial for musicians’ wellbeing and quality of life, as brief mindfulness training is an accessible and cost-efficient way to keep musicians playing the music we all love to listen to.

Grantor dc:publisher

Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Boileau, Kayla

Contributors dc:contributor

• Smith, Andra

• Music
• Brain activity

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-30798

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/49997