Audio-visual concert performances synchronize an audience’s heart rates

Despite the increasing availability of recorded music, people continue to engage in live musical experiences such as multimodal live concerts. However, the dynamics of audience engagement in such contexts are largely understudied. In a classical concert experiment, we presented audiences with audio-only (AO) and audio-visual (AV) piano performances while cardiorespiratory measures were continuously recorded. To investigate engagement, cardiorespiratory synchrony was calculated using both correlation and phase coherence methods. Only correlation measures remained significant in comparison to control (circular-shifted) data. Significant synchrony measures were then assessed between modalities, both across and within music pieces. AV performances evoked higher inter-subject correlation of heart rate (ISC-HR). However, self-reported engagement did not correspond to synchrony when averaged across music pieces. On the other hand, synchronized deceleration-acceleration heart rate (HR) patterns, typical of an ‘orienting response’ (an index of directed attention), occurred within music pieces at salient events (i.e., at section boundaries). In other words, seeing musicians perform heightened audience engagement at structurally important moments in the music. These results highlight the multimodal effects of music in real-world contexts, calling for future studies to explore wider-ranging genres and contexts to better understand dynamics of audience synchrony and engagement.