Key result
Music and lavender separately improve post-stress autonomic recovery but show no benefit when combined.
Why the study?
Few studies have compared the presentation and interaction of relaxing music and odor within the same experimental protocol to examine their effects on autonomic nervous system recovery after cognitive stress.
Do relaxing music and/or lavender odor improve physiological recovery (HF-HRV and EDA) after cognitive stress in human participants?
Population
99 participants completing timely constrained cognitively demanding tasks
Comparison
Music vs odor vs music+odor vs control during recovery
Design
Four-arm experimental study
Follow-up
30 min after cognitive stress
Authors
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Music or lavender alone may aid autonomic recovery after stress; hypothesis-generating for absent multisensory benefit in larger studies.
RCT (n=99)
Do relaxing music and/or lavender odor improve physiological recovery (HF-HRV and EDA) after cognitive stress in human participants?
Music and lavender odor individually improve parasympathetic and sympathetic recovery after cognitive stress, respectively, but their combination provides no multisensory benefit.
Baccarani et al. (2023) conducted an RCT in Cognitive stress (n=99). Relaxing music (slow-paced classical pieces) and/or odor (lavender essential oil) vs. Odorless silent control was evaluated on High-frequency component of heart rate variability (HF-HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA). In 99 participants, music and lavender odor facilitated physiological recovery after cognitive stress when presented separately, but their combination yielded no beneficial effect on autonomic indexes.
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