The Effect of Music on Dogs:  Entrainment

by Malcolm Riordan

Have you ever wondered which music dogs would like, or if they are affected by the music we play?

Perhaps dogs would gravitate toward country music? The nature of dogs seems to fall right in with Nashville's straight-forward basic emotions, simple belly pleasures, and the ensuing regrets.  Of course dogs don't really get much out of song lyrics, but it does indeed turn out that our dogs do respond to certain elements within music itself.

Truman

Interestingly, there is science and research on this. Psychoacoustics is a field of science that looks at how sound can affect humans - particularly our physiologic reaction to music and how it impacts the nervous system.

Several decades of research and observation in the field of psychoacoustics reveals that auditory stimulation has a significant impact on our psyche and body—more than most people are aware. For decades musicians, producers, and therapists have innovated and refined music and sound techniques that naturally affect the rhythmic pulse of the human body—brain waves, heart rate, and breathing rate. Music can stimulate or relax us.

This might seem intuitive and obvious. Still, science has analyzed it down into the component elements within music that actively affect us.  These psychosomatically active elements can then be assembled and constructed to have a more pure and pronounced specific effect.

Initially psychoacousticians determined which prescribed intervals, external rhythm beats, level of musical complexity, and so forth were the actual elements in music that cause an effect on humans. They then went on to demonstrate how humans can be sonically manipulated towards either stimulation or towards relaxation by music designed and produced to have those effects.

Zoe

Bioacoustics

Studying and then testing the application of these same concepts with animals has been dubbed bioacoustics.  
In 2002 Dr. Deborah Wells, a psychologist and animal behaviorist in Belfast, Ireland, studied the influence of five types of auditory stimulation on dogs. She played CDs of human conversation, classical music, heavy-metal music, pop music, and a silent control (no music at all) to kenneled shelter dogs.

This study showed that classical music had a marked soothing effect on dogs in animal shelters when compared to the other types of auditory stimulation. In her published paper, Dr. Wells wrote "Classical music resulted in dogs spending more of their time resting than any of the other experimental conditions of auditory stimulation. This type of music also resulted in a significantly lower level of barking."  The findings suggested that classical music, as in humans, had a calming influence.  She also concluded "that heavy metal agitated the dogs, indicated by increased frequencies of standing and barking, and that neither human conversation nor pop music had any apparent effect on the dogs' behaviors . . . "

In 2004 a group including Joshua Leeds, a psychoacoustic researcher/music producer, and Susan Wagner, a veterinary neurologist at the Ohio State University Veterinary College, conducted research that furthered the bioacoustics of dogs. They found that not just any old classical music would have the best results in calming dogs, rather: "Instrumentation and tempo of the classical music can produce marked differences in results. Solo instruments, slower tempos, and less complex arrangements had a greater calming effect than faster selections with more complex harmonic and orchestral content."

Additionally, in 2005, the same Ohio State University group conducted a smaller study that looked at using specifically created and produced classical music's effect on individual dogs with anxieties. These individual dogs were pets with various issues of debilitating anxieties—to thunderstorms, fireworks, separation anxiety at being left alone, to visitors at their home, to other dogs or to children. "Results showed 70% of anxiety behaviors were reduced with psychoacoustically designed music, while 36% of anxiety behaviors were reduced with the non-psychoacoustic  (assorted off-the-shelf classical music) CD. Both CDs calmed the dogs enough to make them lie down. However, it appears that the psychoacoustically designed music, with slower tempo and simpler arrangements and sounds, is more effective in reducing anxiety."

Entrainment

It is fascinating to consider that both humans and dogs respond to specific music, becoming physically and emotional synchronized with such music, be it stimulating or calming. The effect is called entrainment. When humans or dogs become entrained with the music, their heart rate, brainwaves, and respiratory rates are influenced and fall in line with the external rhythms.

For humans, the growing noise pollution of our homes, work, and other daily environments has been demonstrated to cause stress and to cause decrease in immune system function. This has not been studied or proven in dogs, but is a valid speculation based on seeing that dogs do respond physically and emotionally to their sonic environment in a fashion similar to humans.

Future research is targeted to look at not only increasing our understandings of the mechanisms of entrainment in dogs, but also to find if the same concepts would apply to other species, such as cats, laboratory mice and rats, zoo animals and food animals. The proposed studies may point the way to reducing stress in these animals. This could have repercussions that extend, beyond canine entrainment behavior to public health and animal welfare.

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Want to try a little calming entrainment with your dog?  One of the sound researchers mentioned, Joshua Leeds has made four psychoacoustic CDs available. Listen to samples from the original Through a Dog's Ear, and three other follow-up CDs.

Peace out, little doggies.

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All photos are owner submitted from the Humane Society of the United States Spay Day 2011 owner submitted Photo Contest

Woods Rafter Cat Image on Banner by Malcolm Riordan.