Emotion processing of major, minor, and dissonant chords: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals

There is debate whether the foundations of consonance and dissonance are rooted in culture or in psychoacoustics. In order to disentangle the contribution of culture and psychoacoustics, we considered automatic responses to the perfect fifth and the major second (flattened by 25 cents) intervals alongside conscious evaluations of the same intervals across two cultures and two levels of musical expertise. Four groups of participants completed the tasks: expert performers of Lithuanian Sutartinės, English speaking musicians in Western diatonic genres, Lithuanian non-musicians and English-speaking non-musicians. Sutartinės singers were chosen as this style of singing is an example of 'beat diaphony' where intervals of parts form predominantly rough sonorities and audible beats. There was no difference in automatic responses to intervals, suggesting that an aversion to acoustically rough intervals is not governed by cultural familiarity but may have a physical basis in how the human auditory system works. However, conscious evaluations resulted in group differences with Sutartinės singers rating both the flattened major as more positive than did other groups. The results are discussed in the context of recent developments in consonance and dissonance research.

Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing: Harnessing the Power of Music to Improve Emotional Health in Oncology

In this editorial, Drs Peppercorn and noted neuroscientists Miller and Hasselmo comment on a recent randomized trial of music to reduce stress during infusion, noting that our understanding of the brain supports a unique and particularly effective role for music in improving mood and reducing distress for patients with cancer

Transfer of functions based on equivalence class formation using musical stimuli

Empirical evidence has supported that musical excerpts written in major and minor modes are responsible for evoking happiness and sadness, respectively. In this study, we evaluated whether the emotional content evoked by musical stimuli would transfer to abstract figures when they became members of the same equivalence class. Participants assigned to the experimental group were submitted to a training procedure to form equivalence classes comprising musical excerpts (A) and meaningless abstract figures (B, C, and D). Afterward, transfer of function was evaluated using a semantic differential. Participants in the control group showed positive semantic differential scores for major mode musical excerpts, negative scores for minor mode musical excerpts, and neutral scores for the B, C, and D stimuli. Participants in the experimental groups showed positive semantic differential scores for visual stimuli equivalent to the major modes and negative semantic differential scores for visual stimuli equivalent to the minor modes. These results indicate transfer of function of emotional content present in musical stimuli through equivalence class formation. These findings could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of using emotional stimuli in equivalence class formation experiments and in transfer of function itself.

Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain's Structure and Function

Music is a complex phenomenon with multiple brain areas and neural connections being implicated. Centuries ago, music was discovered as an efficient modality for psychological status enrichment and even for the treatment of multiple pathologies. Modern research investigations give a new avenue for music perception and the understanding of the underlying neurological mechanisms, using neuroimaging, especially magnetic resonance imaging. Multiple brain areas were depicted in the last decades as being of high value for music processing, and further analyses in the neuropsychology field uncover the implications in emotional and cognitive activities. Music listening improves cognitive functions such as memory, attention span, and behavioral augmentation. In rehabilitation, music-based therapies have a high rate of success for the treatment of depression and anxiety and even in neurological disorders such as regaining the body integrity after a stroke episode. Our review focused on the neurological and psychological implications of music, as well as presenting the significant clinical relevance of therapies using music.

Inter-subject correlations of EEG reflect subjective arousal and acoustic features of music

Background

Research on music-induced emotion and brain activity is constantly expanding. Although studies using inter-subject correlation (ISC), a collectively shared brain activity analysis method, have been conducted, whether ISC during music listening represents the music preferences of a large population remains uncertain; additionally, it remains unclear which factors influence ISC during music listening. Therefore, here, we aimed to investigate whether the ISCs of electroencephalography (EEG) during music listening represent a preference for music reflecting engagement or interest of a large population in music.

Methods

First, we selected 21 pieces of music from the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart of 2017, which served as an indicator of preference reflecting the engagement and interest of a large population. To ensure even representation, we chose one piece for every fifth song on the chart, spanning from highly popular music to less popular ones. Next, we recorded EEG signals while the subjects listened to the selected music, and they were asked to evaluate four aspects (preference, enjoyment, frequency of listening, and arousal) for each song. Subsequently, we conducted ISC analysis by utilizing the first three principal components of EEG, which were highly correlated across subjects and extracted through correlated component analysis (CorrCA). We then explored whether music with high preferences that reflected the engagement and interest of large population had high ISC values. Additionally, we employed cluster analysis on all 21 pieces of music, utilizing the first three principal components of EEG, to investigate the impact of emotions and musical characteristics on EEG ISC during music listening.

Results

A significant distinction was noted between the mean ISC values of the 10 higher-ranked pieces of music compared to the 10 lower-ranked pieces of music [t(542) = -1.97, p = 0.0025]. This finding suggests that ISC values may correspond preferences reflecting engagement or interest of a large population. Furthermore, we found that significant variations were observed in the first three principal component values among the three clusters identified through cluster analysis, along with significant differences in arousal levels. Moreover, the characteristics of the music (tonality and tempo) differed among the three clusters. This indicates that the principal components, which exhibit high correlation among subjects and were employed in calculating ISC values, represent both subjects' arousal levels and specific characteristics of the music.

Conclusion

Subjects' arousal values during music listening and music characteristics (tonality and tempo) affect ISC values, which represent the interest of a large population in music.

Music in the brain

Music is ubiquitous across human cultures - as a source of affective and pleasurable experience, moving us both physically and emotionally - and learning to play music shapes both brain structure and brain function. Music processing in the brain - namely, the perception of melody, harmony and rhythm - has traditionally been studied as an auditory phenomenon using passive listening paradigms. However, when listening to music, we actively generate predictions about what is likely to happen next. This enactive aspect has led to a more comprehensive understanding of music processing involving brain structures implicated in action, emotion and learning. Here we review the cognitive neuroscience literature of music perception. We show that music perception, action, emotion and learning all rest on the human brain's fundamental capacity for prediction - as formulated by the predictive coding of music model. This Review elucidates how this formulation of music perception and expertise in individuals can be extended to account for the dynamics and underlying brain mechanisms of collective music making. This in turn has important implications for human creativity as evinced by music improvisation. These recent advances shed new light on what makes music meaningful from a neuroscientific perspective.

Affective response to tunes synthesized with musical pitch curves

Tunes perceived as happy may help a user reach an affective state of positive valence. However, a user with negative valence may not be ready to listen to such a tune immediately. In this paper, we consider nudging a user from their current affective state to a target affective state in small steps. We propose a technique to generate a gradation of tunes between an initial-reference tune and a target-reference tune, to achieve the affect transition. The two-dimensional gradation is realized in time and in pitch, respectively, by varying the tempo and by the use of musical pitch curves, i.e. pitch transients or simply 'transients'. We exploit the duration and scaling of transients observed in South Indian music (Carnatic) to introduce transients into existing tunes. In our experiment, we have introduced the transients into Western music tunes. The results of perceptual evaluation show that the affective response to transients is likely to be higher at slow tempos than at fast tempos. Further, when felt, transient-tunes are twice as likely to be associated with positive valence than with negative valence, irrespective of tempo.

Sweetness is in the ear of the beholder: chord preference across United Kingdom and Pakistani listeners

The majority of research in the field of music perception has been conducted with Western participants, and it has remained unclear which aspects of music perception are culture dependent, and which are universal. The current study compared how participants unfamiliar with Western music (people from the Khowar and Kalash tribes native to Northwest Pakistan with minimal exposure to Western music) perceive affect (positive versus negative) in musical chords compared with United Kingdom (UK) listeners, as well as the overall preference for these chords. The stimuli consisted of four distinct chord types (major, minor, augmented, and chromatic) and were played as both vertical blocks (pitches presented concurrently) and arpeggios (pitches presented successively). The results suggest that the Western listener major-positive minor-negative affective distinction is opposite for Northwest Pakistani listeners, arguably because of the reversed prevalence of these chords in the two music cultures. The aversion to the harsh dissonance of the chromatic cluster is present cross-culturally, but the preference for the consonance of the major triad varies between UK and Northwest Pakistani listeners, depending on cultural familiarity. Our findings imply not only notable cultural variation but also commonalities in chord perception across Western and non-Western listeners.

Mathematical Modeling of Brain Activity under Specific Auditory Stimulation

Understanding the connection between different stimuli and the brain response represents a complex research area. However, the use of mathematical models for this purpose is relatively unexplored. The present study investigates the effects of three different auditory stimuli on cerebral biopotentials by means of mathematical functions. The effects of acoustic stimuli (S1, S2, and S3) on cerebral activity were evaluated by electroencephalographic (EEG) recording on 21 subjects for 20 minutes of stimulation, with a 5-minute period of silence before and after stimulation. For the construction of the mathematical models used for the study of the EEG rhythms, we used the Box-Jenkins methodology. Characteristic mathematical models were obtained for the main frequency bands and were expressed by 2 constant functions, 8 first-degree functions, a second-degree function, a fourth-degree function, 6 recursive functions, and 4 periodic functions. The values obtained for the variance estimator are low, demonstrating that the obtained models are correct. The resulting mathematical models allow us to objectively compare the EEG response to the three stimuli, both between the stimuli itself and between each stimulus and the period before stimulation.

Emotion and expertise: how listeners with formal music training use cues to perceive emotion

Although studies of musical emotion often focus on the role of the composer and performer, the communicative process is also influenced by the listener's musical background or experience. Given the equivocal nature of evidence regarding the effects of musical training, the role of listener expertise in conveyed musical emotion remains opaque. Here we examine emotional responses of musically trained listeners across two experiments using (1) eight measure excerpts, (2) musically resolved excerpts and compare them to responses collected from untrained listeners in Battcock and Schutz (2019). In each experiment 30 participants with six or more years of music training rated perceived emotion for 48 excerpts from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) using scales of valence and arousal. Models of listener ratings predict more variance in trained vs. untrained listeners across both experiments. More importantly however, we observe a shift in cue weights related to training. Using commonality analysis and Fischer Z score comparisons as well as margin of error calculations, we show that timing and mode affect untrained listeners equally, whereas mode plays a significantly stronger role than timing for trained listeners. This is not to say the emotional messages are less well recognized by untrained listeners-simply that training appears to shift the relative weight of cues used in making evaluations. These results clarify music training's potential impact on the specific effects of cues in conveying musical emotion.

Enhanced visceromotor emotional reactivity in dyslexia and its relation to salience network connectivity

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder mainly defined by reading difficulties. During reading, individuals with dyslexia exhibit hypoactivity in left-lateralized language systems. Lower activity in one brain circuit can be accompanied by greater activity in another, and, here, we examined whether right-hemisphere-based emotional reactivity may be elevated in dyslexia. We measured emotional reactivity (i.e., facial behavior, physiological activity, and subjective experience) in 54 children ages 7-12 with (n = 32) and without (n = 22) dyslexia while they viewed emotion-inducing film clips. Participants also underwent task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging. Parents of children with dyslexia completed the Behavior Assessment System for Children, which assesses real-world behavior. During film viewing, children with dyslexia exhibited significantly greater reactivity in emotional facial behavior, skin conductance level, and respiration rate than those without dyslexia. Across the sample, greater emotional facial behavior correlated with stronger connectivity between right ventral anterior insula and right pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pFWE<.05), key salience network hubs. In children with dyslexia, greater emotional facial behavior related to better real-world social skills and higher anxiety and depression. Our findings suggest there is heightened visceromotor emotional reactivity in dyslexia, which may lead to interpersonal strengths as well as affective vulnerabilities.

"Stopping for knowledge": The sense of beauty in the perception-action cycle

According to a millennial-old philosophical debate, aesthetic emotions have been connected to knowledge acquisition. Recent scientific evidence, collected across different disciplinary domains, confirms this link, but also reveals that motor inhibition plays a crucial role in the process. In this review, we discuss multidisciplinary results and propose an original account of aesthetic appreciation (the stopping for knowledge hypothesis) framed within the predictive coding theory. We discuss evidence showing that aesthetic emotions emerge in correspondence with an inhibition of motor behavior (i.e., minimizing action), promoting a simultaneous perceptual processing enhancement, at the level of sensory cortices (i.e., optimizing learning). Accordingly, we suggest that aesthetic appreciation may represent a hedonic feedback over learning progresses, motivating the individual to inhibit motor routines to seek further knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, the neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies we review reveal the presence of a strong association between aesthetic appreciation and the activation of the dopaminergic reward-related circuits. Finally, we propose a number of possible applications of the stopping for knowledge hypothesis in the clinical and education domains.

Aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals enhances behavioural and neurophysiological indexes of attentional engagement and motor inhibition

From Kant to current perspectives in neuroaesthetics, the experience of beauty has been described as disinterested, i.e. focusing on the stimulus perceptual features while neglecting self-referred concerns. At a neurophysiological level, some indirect evidence suggests that disinterested aesthetic appreciation might be associated with attentional enhancement and inhibition of motor behaviour. To test this hypothesis, we performed three auditory-evoked potential experiments, employing consonant and dissonant two-note musical intervals. Twenty-two volunteers judged the beauty of intervals (Aesthetic Judgement task) or responded to them as fast as possible (Detection task). In a third Go-NoGo task, a different group of twenty-two participants had to refrain from responding when hearing intervals. Individual aesthetic judgements positively correlated with response times in the Detection task, with slower motor responses for more appreciated intervals. Electrophysiological indexes of attentional engagement (N1/P2) and motor inhibition (N2/P3) were enhanced for more appreciated intervals. These findings represent the first experimental evidence confirming the disinterested interest hypothesis and may have important applications in research areas studying the effects of stimulus features on learning and motor behaviour.

Anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex response to systematically controlled tonal dissonance during passive music listening

Several studies have attempted to investigate how the brain codes emotional value when processing music of contrasting levels of dissonance; however, the lack of control over specific musical structural characteristics (i.e., dynamics, rhythm, melodic contour or instrumental timbre), which are known to affect perceived dissonance, rendered results difficult to interpret. To account for this, we used functional imaging with an optimized control of the musical structure to obtain a finer characterization of brain activity in response to tonal dissonance. Behavioral findings supported previous evidence for an association between increased dissonance and negative emotion. Results further demonstrated that the manipulation of tonal dissonance through systematically controlled changes in interval content elicited contrasting valence ratings but no significant effects on either arousal or potency. Neuroscientific findings showed an engagement of the left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while participants listened to dissonant compared to consonant music, converging with studies that have proposed a core role of these regions during conflict monitoring (detection and resolution), and in the appraisal of negative emotion and fear‐related information. Both the left and right primary auditory cortices showed stronger functional connectivity with the ACC during the dissonant portion of the task, implying a demand for greater information integration when processing negatively valenced musical stimuli. This study demonstrated that the systematic control of musical dissonance could be applied to isolate valence from the arousal dimension, facilitating a novel access to the neural representation of negative emotion.

The sensation of groove is affected by the interaction of rhythmic and harmonic complexity

The pleasurable desire to move to music, also known as groove, is modulated by rhythmic complexity. How the sensation of groove is influenced by other musical features, such as the harmonic complexity of individual chords, is less clear. To address this, we asked people with a range of musical experience to rate stimuli that varied in both rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Rhythm showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with ratings of pleasure and wanting to move, whereas medium and low complexity chords were rated similarly. Pleasure mediated the effect of harmony on wanting to move and high complexity chords attenuated the effect of rhythm on pleasure. We suggest that while rhythmic complexity is the primary driver, harmony, by altering emotional valence, modulates the attentional and temporal prediction processes that underlie rhythm perception. Investigation of the effects of musical training with both regression and group comparison showed that training increased the inverted U effect for harmony and rhythm, respectively. Taken together, this work provides important new information about how the prediction and entrainment processes involved in rhythm perception interact with musical pleasure.

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals

The neural correlates of consonance and dissonance perception have been widely studied, but not the neural correlates of consonance and dissonance production. The most straightforward manner of musical production is singing, but, from an imaging perspective, it still presents more challenges than listening because it involves motor activity. The accurate singing of musical intervals requires integration between auditory feedback processing and vocal motor control in order to correctly produce each note. This protocol presents a method that permits the monitoring of neural activations associated with the vocal production of consonant and dissonant intervals. Four musical intervals, two consonant and two dissonant, are used as stimuli, both for an auditory discrimination test and a task that involves first listening to and then reproducing given intervals. Participants, all female vocal students at the conservatory level, were studied using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) during the performance of the singing task, with the listening task serving as a control condition. In this manner, the activity of both the motor and auditory systems was observed, and a measure of vocal accuracy during the singing task was also obtained. Thus, the protocol can also be used to track activations associated with singing different types of intervals or with singing the required notes more accurately. The results indicate that singing dissonant intervals requires greater participation of the neural mechanisms responsible for the integration of external feedback from the auditory and sensorimotor systems than does singing consonant intervals.

Hidden sources of joy, fear, and sadness: Explicit versus implicit neural processing of musical emotions

Music is often used to regulate emotions and mood. Typically, music conveys and induces emotions even when one does not attend to them. Studies on the neural substrates of musical emotions have, however, only examined brain activity when subjects have focused on the emotional content of the music. Here we address with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the neural processing of happy, sad, and fearful music with a paradigm in which 56 subjects were instructed to either classify the emotions (explicit condition) or pay attention to the number of instruments playing (implicit condition) in 4-s music clips. In the implicit vs. explicit condition, stimuli activated bilaterally the inferior parietal lobule, premotor cortex, caudate, and ventromedial frontal areas. The cortical dorsomedial prefrontal and occipital areas activated during explicit processing were those previously shown to be associated with the cognitive processing of music and emotion recognition and regulation. Moreover, happiness in music was associated with activity in the bilateral auditory cortex, left parahippocampal gyrus, and supplementary motor area, whereas the negative emotions of sadness and fear corresponded with activation of the left anterior cingulate and middle frontal gyrus and down-regulation of the orbitofrontal cortex. Our study demonstrates for the first time in healthy subjects the neural underpinnings of the implicit processing of brief musical emotions, particularly in frontoparietal, dorsolateral prefrontal, and striatal areas of the brain.

Mild Dissonance Preferred Over Consonance in Single Chord Perception

Previous research on harmony perception has mainly been concerned with horizontal aspects of harmony, turning less attention to how listeners perceive psychoacoustic qualities and emotions in single isolated chords. A recent study found mild dissonances to be more preferred than consonances in single chord perception, although the authors did not systematically vary register and consonance in their study; these omissions were explored here. An online empirical experiment was conducted where participants (N = 410) evaluated chords on the dimensions of Valence, Tension, Energy, Consonance, and Preference; 15 different chords were played with piano timbre across two octaves. The results suggest significant differences on all dimensions across chord types, and a strong correlation between perceived dissonance and tension. The register and inversions contributed to the evaluations significantly, nonmusicians distinguishing between triadic inversions similarly to musicians. The mildly dissonant minor ninth, major ninth, and minor seventh chords were rated highest for preference, regardless of musical sophistication. The role of theoretical explanations such as aggregate dyadic consonance, the inverted-U hypothesis, and psychoacoustic roughness, harmonicity, and sharpness will be discussed to account for the preference of mild dissonance over consonance in single chord perception.

Neural activity related to discrimination and vocal production of consonant and dissonant musical intervals

BACKGROUND

Relationships between musical pitches are described as either consonant, when associated with a pleasant and harmonious sensation, or dissonant, when associated with an inharmonious feeling. The accurate singing of musical intervals requires communication between auditory feedback processing and vocal motor control (i.e. audio-vocal integration) to ensure that each note is produced correctly. The objective of this study is to investigate the neural mechanisms through which trained musicians produce consonant and dissonant intervals.

METHODOLOGY

We utilized 4 musical intervals (specifically, an octave, a major seventh, a fifth, and a tritone) as the main stimuli for auditory discrimination testing, and we used the same interval tasks to assess vocal accuracy in a group of musicians (11 subjects, all female vocal students at conservatory level). The intervals were chosen so as to test for differences in recognition and production of consonant and dissonant intervals, as well as narrow and wide intervals. The subjects were studied using fMRI during performance of the interval tasks; the control condition consisted of passive listening.

RESULTS

Singing dissonant intervals as opposed to singing consonant intervals led to an increase in activation in several regions, most notably the primary auditory cortex, the primary somatosensory cortex, the amygdala, the left putamen, and the right insula. Singing wide intervals as opposed to singing narrow intervals resulted in the activation of the right anterior insula. Moreover, we also observed a correlation between singing in tune and brain activity in the premotor cortex, and a positive correlation between training and activation of primary somatosensory cortex, primary motor cortex, and premotor cortex during singing. When singing dissonant intervals, a higher degree of training correlated with the right thalamus and the left putamen.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

Our results indicate that singing dissonant intervals requires greater involvement of neural mechanisms associated with integrating external feedback from auditory and sensorimotor systems than singing consonant intervals, and it would then seem likely that dissonant intervals are intoned by adjusting the neural mechanisms used for the production of consonant intervals. Singing wide intervals requires a greater degree of control than singing narrow intervals, as it involves neural mechanisms which again involve the integration of internal and external feedback.

It's Sad but I Like It: The Neural Dissociation Between Musical Emotions and Liking in Experts and Laypersons

Emotion-related areas of the brain, such as the medial frontal cortices, amygdala, and striatum, are activated during listening to sad or happy music as well as during listening to pleasurable music. Indeed, in music, like in other arts, sad and happy emotions might co-exist and be distinct from emotions of pleasure or enjoyment. Here we aimed at discerning the neural correlates of sadness or happiness in music as opposed those related to musical enjoyment. We further investigated whether musical expertise modulates the neural activity during affective listening of music. To these aims, 13 musicians and 16 non-musicians brought to the lab their most liked and disliked musical pieces with a happy and sad connotation. Based on a listening test, we selected the most representative 18 sec excerpts of the emotions of interest for each individual participant. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings were obtained while subjects listened to and rated the excerpts. The cortico-thalamo-striatal reward circuit and motor areas were more active during liked than disliked music, whereas only the auditory cortex and the right amygdala were more active for disliked over liked music. These results discern the brain structures responsible for the perception of sad and happy emotions in music from those related to musical enjoyment. We also obtained novel evidence for functional differences in the limbic system associated with musical expertise, by showing enhanced liking-related activity in fronto-insular and cingulate areas in musicians.

Right-lateralized unconscious, but not conscious, processing of affective environmental sounds

Much research on the laterality of affective auditory stimuli features emotional speech. However, environmental sounds can also carry affective information, but their lateralized processing for affect has been studied much less. We studied this in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1 we explored whether the detection of affective environmental sounds (from International Affective Digital Sounds) that appeared in auditory scenes was lateralized. While we found that negative targets were detected more rapidly, detection latencies were the same on the left and right. In Experiment 2 we examined whether conscious appraisal of the stimulus was needed for lateralization patterns to emerge, and asked participants to rate the stimuli's pleasantness in a dichotic listening test. This showed that when positive/negative environmental sounds were in the attended to-be-rated channel, ratings were the same regardless of laterality. However, when participants rated neutral stimuli and the unattended channel was positive/negative, the valence of the unattended channel affected the neutral ratings more strongly with left ear (right hemisphere, RH) processing of the affective sound. We link our findings to previous work that suggests that the RH may specialize in the unconscious processing of emotion via subcortical routes.

Experience Drives Synchronization: The phase and Amplitude Dynamics of Neural Oscillations to Musical Chords Are Differentially Modulated by Musical Expertise

Musical expertise is associated with structural and functional changes in the brain that underlie facilitated auditory perception. We investigated whether the phase locking (PL) and amplitude modulations (AM) of neuronal oscillations in response to musical chords are correlated with musical expertise and whether they reflect the prototypicality of chords in Western tonal music. To this aim, we recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) while musicians and non-musicians were presented with common prototypical major and minor chords, and with uncommon, non-prototypical dissonant and mistuned chords, while watching a silenced movie. We then analyzed the PL and AM of ongoing oscillations in the theta (4–8 Hz) alpha (8–14 Hz), beta- (14–30 Hz) and gamma- (30–80 Hz) bands to these chords. We found that musical expertise was associated with strengthened PL of ongoing oscillations to chords over a wide frequency range during the first 300 ms from stimulus onset, as opposed to increased alpha-band AM to chords over temporal MEG channels. In musicians, the gamma-band PL was strongest to non-prototypical compared to other chords, while in non-musicians PL was strongest to minor chords. In both musicians and non-musicians the long-latency (> 200 ms) gamma-band PL was also sensitive to chord identity, and particularly to the amplitude modulations (beats) of the dissonant chord. These findings suggest that musical expertise modulates oscillation PL to musical chords and that the strength of these modulations is dependent on chord prototypicality.

The pleasures of sad music: a systematic review

Sadness is generally seen as a negative emotion, a response to distressing and adverse situations. In an aesthetic context, however, sadness is often associated with some degree of pleasure, as suggested by the ubiquity and popularity, throughout history, of music, plays, films and paintings with a sad content. Here, we focus on the fact that music regarded as sad is often experienced as pleasurable. Compared to other art forms, music has an exceptional ability to evoke a wide-range of feelings and is especially beguiling when it deals with grief and sorrow. Why is it, then, that while human survival depends on preventing painful experiences, mental pain often turns out to be explicitly sought through music? In this article we consider why and how sad music can become pleasurable. We offer a framework to account for how listening to sad music can lead to positive feelings, contending that this effect hinges on correcting an ongoing homeostatic imbalance. Sadness evoked by music is found pleasurable: (1) when it is perceived as non-threatening; (2) when it is aesthetically pleasing; and (3) when it produces psychological benefits such as mood regulation, and empathic feelings, caused, for example, by recollection of and reflection on past events. We also review neuroimaging studies related to music and emotion and focus on those that deal with sadness. Further exploration of the neural mechanisms through which stimuli that usually produce sadness can induce a positive affective state could help the development of effective therapies for disorders such as depression, in which the ability to experience pleasure is attenuated.

A Trio of Concerns

This essay assesses the two most significant changes in psychology over the past century: the attempt to localize psychological phenomena in restricted brain sites and the search for genetic contributions to behavior and psychopathology. Although there are advantages to these new developments, they are accompanied by some questionable assumptions. Because the investigators in these domains often relate variation in their biological measures to variation in personality traits evaluated with questionnaires, an analysis of the unique properties of the verbalreport questionnaires is presented. It is suggested that future research on human personality should try to combine semantic reports with behaviors and biological data in order to arrive at more fruitful constructs.

Functional MRI of music emotion processing in frontotemporal dementia

Frontotemporal dementia is an important neurodegenerative disorder of younger life led by profound emotional and social dysfunction. Here we used fMRI to assess brain mechanisms of music emotion processing in a cohort of patients with frontotemporal dementia (n = 15) in relation to healthy age-matched individuals (n = 11). In a passive-listening paradigm, we manipulated levels of emotion processing in simple arpeggio chords (mode versus dissonance) and emotion modality (music versus human emotional vocalizations). A complex profile of disease-associated functional alterations was identified with separable signatures of musical mode, emotion level, and emotion modality within a common, distributed brain network, including posterior and anterior superior temporal and inferior frontal cortices and dorsal brainstem effector nuclei. Separable functional signatures were identified post-hoc in patients with and without abnormal craving for music (musicophilia): a model for specific abnormal emotional behaviors in frontotemporal dementia. Our findings indicate the potential of music to delineate neural mechanisms of altered emotion processing in dementias, with implications for future disease tracking and therapeutic strategies.

Acquired amusia

Recent developments in the cognitive neuroscience of music suggest that a further review of the topic of amusia is timely. In this chapter, we first consider previous taxonomies of amusia and propose a fresh framework for understanding the amusias, essentially as disorders of cognitive information processing. We critically review current cognitive and neuroanatomic findings in the published literature on amusia. We assess the extent to which the clinical and neuropsychologic evidence in amusia can be reconciled; both with the information-processing framework we propose, and with the picture of the brain organization of music and language processing emerging from cognitive neuroscience and functional neuroimaging studies. The balance of evidence suggests that the amusias can be understood as disorders of musical object cognition targeting separable levels of an information-processing hierarchy and underpinned by specific brain network dysfunction. The neuroanatomic associations of the amusias show substantial overlap with brain networks that process speech; however, this convergence leaves scope for separable brain mechanisms based on altered connectivity and dynamics across culprit networks. The study of the amusias contributes to an increasingly complex picture of the musical brain that transcends any simple dichotomy between music and speech or other complex sounds.

Enhancing emotional experiences to dance through music: the role of valence and arousal in the cross-modal bias

It is well established that emotional responses to stimuli presented to one perceptive modality (e.g., visual) are modulated by the concurrent presentation of affective information to another modality (e.g., auditory)-an effect known as the cross-modal bias. However, the affective mechanisms mediating this effect are still not fully understood. It remains unclear what role different dimensions of stimulus valence and arousal play in mediating the effect, and to what extent cross-modal influences impact not only our perception and conscious affective experiences, but also our psychophysiological emotional response. We addressed these issues by measuring participants' subjective emotion ratings and their Galvanic Skin Responses (GSR) in a cross-modal affect perception paradigm employing videos of ballet dance movements and instrumental classical music as the stimuli. We chose these stimuli to explore the cross-modal bias in a context of stimuli (ballet dance movements) that most participants would have relatively little prior experience with. Results showed (i) that the cross-modal bias was more pronounced for sad than for happy movements, whereas it was equivalent when contrasting high vs. low arousal movements; and (ii) that movement valence did not modulate participants' GSR, while movement arousal did, such that GSR was potentiated in the case of low arousal movements with sad music and when high arousal movements were paired with happy music. Results are discussed in the context of the affective dimension of neuroentrainment and with regards to implications for the art community.

The role of the medial temporal limbic system in processing emotions in voice and music

Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to decode the emotional value of sensory information. Recent neuroimaging studies, as well as lesion studies in patients, have shown that the amygdala is sensitive to emotions in voice and music. Similarly, the hippocampus, another part of the temporal limbic system (TLS), is responsive to vocal and musical emotions, but its specific roles in emotional processing from music and especially from voices have been largely neglected. Here we review recent research on vocal and musical emotions, and outline commonalities and differences in the neural processing of emotions in the TLS in terms of emotional valence, emotional intensity and arousal, as well as in terms of acoustic and structural features of voices and music. We summarize the findings in a neural framework including several subcortical and cortical functional pathways between the auditory system and the TLS. This framework proposes that some vocal expressions might already receive a fast emotional evaluation via a subcortical pathway to the amygdala, whereas cortical pathways to the TLS are thought to be equally used for vocal and musical emotions. While the amygdala might be specifically involved in a coarse decoding of the emotional value of voices and music, the hippocampus might process more complex vocal and musical emotions, and might have an important role especially for the decoding of musical emotions by providing memory-based and contextual associations.

Do you hear the same? Cardiorespiratory responses between mothers and infants during tonal and atonal music

This study examined the effects of tonal and atonal music on respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in 40 mothers and their 3-month-old infants. The tonal music fragment was composed using the structure of a harmonic series that corresponds with the pitch ratio characteristics of mother–infant vocal dialogues. The atonal fragment did not correspond with a tonal structure. Mother–infant ECG and respiration were registered along with simultaneous video recordings. RR-interval, respiration rate, and RSA were calculated. RSA was corrected for any confounding respiratory and motor activities. The results showed that the infants’ and the mothers’ RSA-responses to the tonal and atonal music differed. The infants showed significantly higher RSA-levels during the tonal fragment than during the atonal fragment and baseline, suggesting increased vagal activity during tonal music. The mothers showed RSA-responses that were equal to their infants only when the infants were lying close to their bodies and when they heard the difference between the two fragments, preferring the tonal above the atonal fragment. The results are discussed with regard to music-related topics, psychophysiological integration and mother-infant vocal interaction processes.

Mozart, music and medicine

According to the first publication in 1993 by Rauscher et al. [Nature 1993;365:611], the Mozart effect implies the enhancement of reasoning skills solving spatial problems in normal subjects after listening to Mozart's piano sonata K 448. A further evaluation of this effect has raised the question whether there is a link between music-generated emotions and a higher level of cognitive abilities by mere listening. Positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have revealed that listening to pleasurable music activates cortical and subcortical cerebral areas where emotions are processed. These neurobiological effects of music suggest that auditory stimulation evokes emotions linked to heightened arousal and result in temporarily enhanced performance in many cognitive domains. Music therapy applies this arousal in a clinical setting as it may offer benefits to patients by diverting their attention from unpleasant experiences and future interventions. It has been applied in the context of various important clinical conditions such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer pain, epilepsy, depression and dementia. Furthermore, music may modulate the immune response, among other things, evidenced by increasing the activity of natural killer cells, lymphocytes and interferon-γ, which is an interesting feature as many diseases are related to a misbalanced immune system. Many of these clinical studies, however, suffer from methodological inadequacies. Nevertheless, at present, there is moderate but not altogether convincing evidence that listening to known and liked music helps to decrease the burden of a disease and enhances the immune system by modifying stress.

Neural correlates of the behavioral-autonomic interaction response to potentially threatening stimuli

Subjective assessment of emotional valence is typically associated with both brain activity and autonomic arousal. Accurately assessing emotional salience is particularly important when perceiving threat. We sought to characterize the neural correlates of the interaction between behavioral and autonomic responses to potentially threatening visual and auditory stimuli. Twenty-five healthy male subjects underwent fMRI scanning whilst skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded. One hundred and eighty pictures, sentences, and sounds were assessed as “harmless” or “threatening.” Individuals' stimulus-locked, phasic SCRs and trial-by-trial behavioral assessments were entered as regressors into a flexible factorial design to establish their separate autonomic and behavioral neural correlates, and convolved to examine psycho-autonomic interaction (PAI) effects. Across all stimuli, “threatening,” compared with “harmless” behavioral assessments were associated with mainly frontal and precuneus activation with specific within-modality activations including bilateral parahippocampal gyri (pictures), bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and frontal pole (sentences), and right Heschl's gyrus and bilateral temporal gyri (sounds). Across stimulus modalities SCRs were associated with activation of parieto-occipito-thalamic regions, an activation pattern which was largely replicated within-modality. In contrast, PAI analyses revealed modality-specific activations including right fusiform/parahippocampal gyrus (pictures), right insula (sentences), and mid-cingulate gyrus (sounds). Phasic SCR activity was positively correlated with an individual's propensity to assess stimuli as “threatening.” SCRs may modulate cognitive assessments on a “harmless–threatening” dimension, thereby modulating affective tone and hence behavior.

Evoked magnetoencephalographic responses to omission of a tone in a musical scale

The musical scale is a basis for melodies and can be a simple melody by itself. The present study investigated magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to omissions of one tone out of the C major scale. The tone preceding the omitted "target" tone was either prolonged or repeated. In another series, the tone after the target tone was repeated. In "normal" oddball experiments, the complete C major scale was presented more frequently than an incomplete scale lacking one tone, and in "reverse" oddball experiments, the roles were exchanged. In the normal oddball experiments, omission of any tone produced a response significantly different in amplitude from the standard response in the group of non-musicians, although the responses differed depending on the types of omission. The leading tone (B in the C major scale) was shown to elicit a large response when omitted and also when its presence was emphasized. The Reverse oddball experiments showed that repeated presentation of an incomplete scale lacking one tone temporarily reduced the influence of the complete scale but could not even temporarily replace it working as "standard." In addition, an auxiliary study was done to see possible influence of rhythmic variations.

A Functional MRI Study of Happy and Sad Emotions in Music with and without Lyrics

Musical emotions, such as happiness and sadness, have been investigated using instrumental music devoid of linguistic content. However, pop and rock, the most common musical genres, utilize lyrics for conveying emotions. Using participants’ self-selected musical excerpts, we studied their behavior and brain responses to elucidate how lyrics interact with musical emotion processing, as reflected by emotion recognition and activation of limbic areas involved in affective experience. We extracted samples from subjects’ selections of sad and happy pieces and sorted them according to the presence of lyrics. Acoustic feature analysis showed that music with lyrics differed from music without lyrics in spectral centroid, a feature related to perceptual brightness, whereas sad music with lyrics did not diverge from happy music without lyrics, indicating the role of other factors in emotion classification. Behavioral ratings revealed that happy music without lyrics induced stronger positive emotions than happy music with lyrics. We also acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data while subjects performed affective tasks regarding the music. First, using ecological and acoustically variable stimuli, we broadened previous findings about the brain processing of musical emotions and of songs versus instrumental music. Additionally, contrasts between sad music with versus without lyrics recruited the parahippocampal gyrus, the amygdala, the claustrum, the putamen, the precentral gyrus, the medial and inferior frontal gyri (including Broca’s area), and the auditory cortex, while the reverse contrast produced no activations. Happy music without lyrics activated structures of the limbic system and the right pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, whereas auditory regions alone responded to happy music with lyrics. These findings point to the role of acoustic cues for the experience of happiness in music and to the importance of lyrics for sad musical emotions.

Music and emotions in the brain: familiarity matters

The importance of music in our daily life has given rise to an increased number of studies addressing the brain regions involved in its appreciation. Some of these studies controlled only for the familiarity of the stimuli, while others relied on pleasantness ratings, and others still on musical preferences. With a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we wished to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. First, we conducted a listening test, in which participants rated the familiarity and liking of song excerpts from the pop/rock repertoire, allowing us to select a personalized set of stimuli per subject. Then, we used a passive listening paradigm in fMRI to study music appreciation in a naturalistic condition with increased ecological value. Brain activation data revealed that broad emotion-related limbic and paralimbic regions as well as the reward circuitry were significantly more active for familiar relative to unfamiliar music. Smaller regions in the cingulate cortex and frontal lobe, including the motor cortex and Broca's area, were found to be more active in response to liked music when compared to disliked one. Hence, familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music, as revealed by fMRI data.

Musical anhedonia: selective loss of emotional experience in listening to music

Recent case studies have suggested that emotion perception and emotional experience of music have independent cognitive processing. We report a patient who showed selective impairment of emotional experience only in listening to music, that is musical anhednia. A 71-year-old right-handed man developed an infarction in the right parietal lobe. He found himself unable to experience emotion in listening to music, even to which he had listened pleasantly before the illness. In neuropsychological assessments, his intellectual, memory, and constructional abilities were normal. Speech audiometry and recognition of environmental sounds were within normal limits. Neuromusicological assessments revealed no abnormality in the perception of elementary components of music, expression and emotion perception of music. Brain MRI identified the infarct lesion in the right inferior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that emotional experience of music could be selectively impaired without any disturbance of other musical, neuropsychological abilities. The right parietal lobe might participate in emotional experience in listening to music.

Reciprocal modulation of cognitive and emotional aspects in pianistic performances

Background

High level piano performance requires complex integration of perceptual, motor, cognitive and emotive skills. Observations in psychology and neuroscience studies have suggested reciprocal inhibitory modulation of the cognition by emotion and emotion by cognition. However, it is still unclear how cognitive states may influence the pianistic performance. The aim of the present study is to verify the influence of cognitive and affective attention in the piano performances.

Methods and Findings

Nine pianists were instructed to play the same piece of music, firstly focusing only on cognitive aspects of musical structure (cognitive performances), and secondly, paying attention solely on affective aspects (affective performances). Audio files from pianistic performances were examined using a computational model that retrieves nine specific musical features (descriptors) – loudness, articulation, brightness, harmonic complexity, event detection, key clarity, mode detection, pulse clarity and repetition. In addition, the number of volunteers' errors in the recording sessions was counted. Comments from pianists about their thoughts during performances were also evaluated. The analyses of audio files throughout musical descriptors indicated that the affective performances have more: agogics, legatos, pianos phrasing, and less perception of event density when compared to the cognitive ones. Error analysis demonstrated that volunteers misplayed more left hand notes in the cognitive performances than in the affective ones. Volunteers also played more wrong notes in affective than in cognitive performances. These results correspond to the volunteers' comments that in the affective performances, the cognitive aspects of piano execution are inhibited, whereas in the cognitive performances, the expressiveness is inhibited.

Conclusions

Therefore, the present results indicate that attention to the emotional aspects of performance enhances expressiveness, but constrains cognitive and motor skills in the piano execution. In contrast, attention to the cognitive aspects may constrain the expressivity and automatism of piano performances.

The perception of harmonic triads: an fMRI study

We have undertaken an fMRI study of harmony perception in order to determine the relationship between the diatonic triads of Western harmony and brain activation. Subjects were 12 right-handed, male non-musicians. All stimuli consisted of two harmonic triads that did not contain dissonant intervals of 1 or 2 semitones, but differed between them by 0, ±1, ±2 or ±3 semitones and therefore differed in terms of their inherent stability (major and minor chords) or instability (diminished and augmented chords). These musical stimuli were chosen on the basis of a psychoacoustical model of triadic harmony that has previously been shown to explain the fundamental regularities of traditional harmony theory. The brain response to the chords could be distinguished within the right orbitofrontal cortex and cuneus/posterior cingulate gyrus. Moreover, the strongest hemodynamic responses were found for conditions of rising pitch leading from harmonic tension to modal resolution.

From music-beat to heart-beat: a journey in the complex interactions between music, brain and heart

Although the potential influence of music in eliciting organic reactions has been appreciated since the ancient Assyrian and Greek cultures, its relationship with body responses has been believed for long to belong to the field of magic. Growing experimental evidence now attests that some kind of music might indeed modulate several cardiac and neurological functions, as well as trigger biochemical measurable stress-reducing effects in certain individuals, mostly depending on their subjective musical education. On this basis, music has been increasingly used as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of different diseases in healthy and ill subjects over recent years (e.g., the so called "Mozart effect"), although the underlying scientific background is still poorly understood. The aim of this article is to review the current scientific evidences about the complex and multifaceted interactions between music and human biology.

Cognitive and motor loops of the human cerebro-cerebellar system

We applied fMRI and diffusion-weighted MRI to study the segregation of cognitive and motor functions in the human cerebro-cerebellar system. Our fMRI results show that a load increase in a nonverbal auditory working memory task is associated with enhanced brain activity in the parietal, dorsal premotor, and lateral prefrontal cortices and in lobules VII-VIII of the posterior cerebellum, whereas a sensory-motor control task activated the motor/somatosensory, medial prefrontal, and posterior cingulate cortices and lobules V/VI of the anterior cerebellum. The load-dependent activity in the crus I/II had a specific relationship with cognitive performance: This activity correlated negatively with load-dependent increase in RTs. This correlation between brain activity and RTs was not observed in the sensory-motor task in the activated cerebellar regions. Furthermore, probabilistic tractography analysis of the diffusion-weighted MRI data suggests that the tracts between the cerebral and the cerebellar areas exhibiting cognitive load-dependent and sensory-motor activity are mainly projected via separated pontine (feed-forward tracts) and thalamic (feedback tracts) nuclei. The tractography results also indicate that the crus I/II in the posterior cerebellum is linked with the lateral prefrontal areas activated by cognitive load increase, whereas the anterior cerebellar lobe is not. The current results support the view that cognitive and motor functions are segregated in the cerebellum. On the basis of these results and theories of the function of the cerebellum, we suggest that the posterior cerebellar activity during a demanding cognitive task is involved with optimization of the response speed.