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I hypothesized that hearing the heartbeat of another person would affect listeners’ empathic state, and designed an experiment to measure changes in behavior and cardiac neurophysiology. In my experiment, participants (N = 27) completed modified versions of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET) in different auditory heartbeat conditions (slow, fast, silence, audio-only). For each trial, participants completed two measures of empathic state: cognitive (“What is this person feeling?”) and affective (“How well could you feel what they were feeling?”). From my results, I found that the presence of auditory heartbeats i) changed cognitive empathy and ii) increased affective empathy, and these responses depended on the heartbeat tempo.  I also analyzed two markers of cardiac neurophysiology: i) Heart Rate (HR) and ii) the Heartbeat-Evoked Potential (HEP). I found that the auditory heartbeat decreased listeners’ HR, and there were additional effects due to tempo and affective empathy. Finally, a frontal component of the HEP was more negative in the time-range of 350-500ms, which I attribute to a decrease in cardiac attention (i.e. “interoception”) when listening empathically to the heartbeat of others.

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My thesis studied the the empathic effects of a simple acoustic cue that is almost universal in the world's musics (i.e. tempo). I studied behavioral and neurophysiological changes that occurred when hearing the heartbeat of another person. This research explored the "White Space" at the intersection of Empathy, Music and Neurophysiology.

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Example Stimuli (use headphones for realism)

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Example Stimuli (use headphones for realism)

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Participants completed the two measures in four basic stimulus conditions: 1) Audio-Only (Slow or Fast), 2) Visual-Only, 3) Audio-Visual Slow & ) Audio-Visual Fast.

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I co-wrote an NSF-EAGER grant that resulted in the purchase of an ActiChamp 64-Channel Active EEG System. I learned how to record EEG and ECG and developed BCI software to synchronize the neurophysiological data with the audio and empathic responses. We used this information to study two markers of short-term Cardiac Neurophysiology: i) Heart Rate (HR) and ii) the Heartbeat Evoked Potential (HEP).

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I cleaned the participant's EEG data, performed Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and formed epochs around the R-peak in their ECG. Using non-parameteric, cluster-based statistics, I found that a frontal component that was significantly more negative in the time range of 350-500ms after their internal heartbeat (p < 0.05). This frontal negativity in the HEP has been associated with decreases in interoception, and perceiving the affect (emotion) of other people. My results might mean that participant's shifted their attention away from their own heart when they listened empathically to the heartbeat of the other person.

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I used a modified version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task with two questions. The first question asked, "What is this person feeling?", and was a measure of cognitive emapthy. The second question asked, "How well did you feel what they were feeling?", and was a measure of affective empathy.

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My experimental conditions allowed an analysis of three nested independent variables:

1. Modality - The presence or absence of heartbeats

2. Tempo - Whether the heartbeats were slow or fast.

3. Congruency - Whether the tempo of the heartbeat matched the expression in the eyes.

I studied the effects of these parameters on three dependent variables:

1. Cognitive Empathy - Selected emotion label for the RMET task.

2. Affective Empathy - Self-reported "feeling what the other was feeling."

3. Cardiac Neurophysiology - Heart Rate & the Heartbeat-Evoked Potential

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Participants' reports of "How well did you feel what they were feeling?" increased when there were auditory heartbeats compared to without auditory heartbeats.

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Participants' heartrates decreased from baseline when the heard auditory heartbeats. These changes from baseline were significantly lower than the same stimuli without auditory heartbeats.

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Participants' changed their response to "What is this person feeling" more frequently when there were auditory heartbeats compared to silence.