Effects of a Calculation Task and Music on an Immune Index of Salivary Immunoglobulin A (sIgA)

摘要

Recently, several analysis techniques of estimating particular chemical substances within human body have been developed. It provides scientists a way to investigate and estimate human physiological changes induced by mental stress. On the other hand, such studies on relaxing factor are still less consistent, and few studies assessed the effects of relaxing factors with/under stressful situation. In this study, we focused on one of the major immune substance, named immunoglobulin A (IgA), and investigated the modulation of IgA induced by stressful task and following relaxing music. Participants were asked to conduct a simple calculation task and, after that, they were exposed to relaxing music or silence in a dark room. As a result, we observed an increase of SIgA right after the calculation task and decrease of SIgA after auditory stimuli. Notably, the amount of decrease in the case of relaxing music was significantly greater than silence condition. We suggest that a relaxing factor can work more effectively to human immune system during recovering process after a short-term mental stress, and it is necessary to investigate the effects of a relaxing factor focusing on an aspect of its context dependent nature.