Empathy manipulation impacts music-induced emotions: a psychophysiological study on opera

Acoustic perception and emotion evocation by rock art soundscapes of Altai (Russia)

The major goal of psychoarchaeoacoustics is to understand the psychology behind motivations and emotions of past communities when selecting certain acoustic environments to set activities involving the production of paintings and carvings. Within this framework, the present study seeks to explore whether a group of archaeological rock art sites in Altai (Siberia, Russia) are distinguished by particular acoustic imprints that elicit distinct reactions on listeners, in perceptual and emotional terms. Sixty participants were presented with a series of natural sounds convolved with six impulse responses from Altai, three of them recorded in locations in front of rock art panels and three of them in front of similar locations but without any trace of rock art. Participants were interrogated about their subjective perception of the sounds presented, using 10 psychoacoustic and emotional scales. The mixed ANOVA analyses carried out revealed that feelings of "presence," "closeness," and "tension" evoked by all sounds were significantly influenced by the location. These effects were attributed to the differences in reverberation between the locations with and without rock art. Despite results are not consistent across all the studied rock art sites, and acknowledging the presence of several limitations, this study highlights the significance of its methodology. It stresses the crucial aspect of incorporating the limitations encountered in shaping future research endeavors.

Changing positive and negative affects through music experiences: a study with university students

BACKGROUND

Currently, there are few empirical studies that demonstrate the effects of music on specific emotions, especially in the educational context. For this reason, this study was carried out to examine the impact of music to identify affective changes after exposure to three musical stimuli.

METHODS

The participants were 71 university students engaged in a music education course and none of them were musicians. Changes in the affective state of non-musical student teachers were studied after listening to three pieces of music. An inter-subject repeated measures ANOVA test was carried out using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure their affective state.

RESULTS

The results revealed that: (i) the three musical experiences were beneficial in increasing positive affects and reducing negative affects, with significant differences between the interaction of Music Experiences × Moment (pre-post); (ii) listening to Mahler's sad fifth symphony reduced more negative affects than the other experimental conditions; (iii) performing the blues had the highest positive effects.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide applied keys aspects for music education and research, as they show empirical evidence on how music can modify specific affects of personal experience.

Does music heal? Opera and the mood of people over 50 years of age

The authors of this work, noticing that opera is a combination of music and theater, examined the relationship between listening to opera music and mood changes in people over 50 years of age. The study took the form of a quasi-experiment. Recipients were invited to the previously prepared room, where the audiovisual material – a recording of the opera “La Traviata” – was presented for the first time. This was preceded by the respondents completing the SUPIN C30 and S30 questionnaires and a short survey by the authors. After the presentation of the stimulus, the subjects again filled in the SUPIN S30 questionnaire scale and the GEMS scale. The described procedure was carried out twice, using two different music materials. The procedure remained unchanged, while the audiovisual material changed. The second time, the participants were presented with a recording from the opera “The Barber of Seville”. The participants of the study were 30 people. In the studied group, there are no significant changes in emotional states in response to the opera “La Traviata”. In turn, the opera “The Barber of Seville” has no effect on a positive emotional state. Instead, it caused a statistically significant change in the level of negative emotional states. The results of this study are largely consistent with the results of other studies examining the relationship between music and mood, but there are also limitations – only two pieces of opera music were used and no control group was included. Research has shown that opera, as a specific musical genre, despite its peculiar form, affects mood and emotions.

Does art reduce pain and stress? A registered report protocol of investigating autonomic and endocrine markers of music, visual art, and multimodal aesthetic experience

The pain- and stress-reducing effects of music are well-known, but the effects of visual art, and the combination of these two, are much less investigated. We aim to (1) investigate the pain- and (2) stress-reducing effects of multimodal (music + visual art) aesthetic experience as we expect this to have stronger effects than a single modal aesthetic experience (music/ visual art), and in an exploratory manner, (3) investigate the underlying mechanisms of aesthetic experience, and the (4) individual differences. In a repeated-measures design (music, visual art, multimodal aesthetic experience, control) participants bring self-selected “movingly beautiful” visual artworks and pieces of music to the lab, where pain and stress are induced by the cold pressor test. Activity of the pain and stress responsive systems are measured by subjective reports, autonomic (electrocardiography, electrodermal activity, salivary alpha-amylase) and endocrine markers (salivary cortisol).

Experimental Enhancement of Feelings of Transcendence, Tenderness, and Expressiveness by Music in Christian Liturgical Spaces

In western cultures, when it comes to places of worship and liturgies, music, acoustics and architecture go hand in hand. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether the emotions evoked by music are enhanced by the acoustics of the space where the music was composed to be played on. We explored whether the emotional responses of western naïve listeners to two vocal pieces from the Renaissance, one liturgical and one secular, convolved with the impulse responses of four Christian temples from the United Kingdom, were modulated by the appropriate piece/space matching. In an alternative forced choice task where participants had to indicate their preference for the original recording of the piece (not convolved with any temple-like acoustics) vs. the convolved one, no significant differences were found. However, in the tasks where participants rated their emotional in response to each piece and acoustic condition, the factorial ANCOVA analyses performed on the results revealed significant effects. We observed that, across pieces and spaces, participants found the temple-like acoustics as more transcendent, compared to the acoustics of the original version of the pieces. In addition, they rated the secular piece as more tender and the liturgical piece as more expressive in its original versions, compared to the convolved ones. We conclude that the acoustic signature of the four Christian temples causes an exaltation of certain emotions on listeners, although this effect is not associated to one or another musical piece.

Being moved by listening to unfamiliar sad music induces reward-related hormonal changes in empathic listeners

Many people enjoy sad music, and the appeal for tragedy is widespread among the consumers of film and literature. The underlying mechanisms of such aesthetic experiences are not well understood. We tested whether pleasure induced by sad, unfamiliar instrumental music is explained with a homeostatic or a reward theory, each of which is associated with opposite patterns of changes in the key hormones. Sixty-two women listened to sad music (or nothing) while serum was collected for subsequent measurement of prolactin (PRL) and oxytocin (OT) and stress marker (cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone) concentrations. Two groups of participants were recruited on the basis of low and high trait empathy. In the high empathy group, PRL and OT levels were significantly lower with music compared with no music. And compared to the low empathy group, the high empathy individuals reported an increase of positive mood and higher ratings of being moved with music. None of the stress markers showed any changes across the conditions or the groups. These hormonal changes, inconsistent with the homeostatic theory proposed by Huron, exhibit a pattern expected of general reward. Our findings illuminate how unfamiliar and low arousal music may give rise to pleasurable experiences.

Musical Training in the Development of Empathy and Prosocial Behaviors

Music not only regulates mood but also promotes the development and maintenance of empathy and social understanding. Since empathy is crucial for well-being and indispensable in social life, it is necessary to develop strategies to improve empathy and prosocial behaviors. To fulfill this aim, researchers have extensively investigated the effect of intensive musical training on the development of empathy. Here, we first summarize evidence showing the powerful influence of musical training on the development of empathy and then discuss psychological mechanisms responsible for those observations. The conclusions drawn from most previous studies were mainly based on behavioral measurements, while the neural basis of musical training in the development of the empathic brain is still unclear. Fortunately, brain imaging research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the neural underpinnings associated with musical training and its possible connection to the development of the empathic brain. One of the most distinctive signatures of musical training is structural and functional changes of multiple brain regions, and such changes might be related to some of the empathic behaviors observed in musically trained children. Therefore, intensive musical training in childhood may increase levels of empathy, and applied research is required to optimize the training strategy before implementing music education in empathy regulation. Moreover, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand neural mechanisms underlying the causal effect of musical training on empathy development. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of the empathic brain and for improving prosocial behaviors.

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the “perceived” than the “felt” task. This result suggested that the focus on one’s self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the “felt” task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression.

Minireview on the Connections between the Neuropsychiatric and Dental Disorders: Current Perspectives and the Possible Relevance of Oxidative Stress and Other Factors

Although the connections between neuropsychiatric and dental disorders attracted the attention of some research groups for more than 50 years now, there is a general opinion in the literature that it remains a clearly understudied and underrated topic, with many unknowns and a multitude of challenges for the specialists working in both these areas of research. In this way, considering the previous experience of our groups in these individual matters which are combined here, we are summarizing in this minireport the current status of knowledge on the connections between neuropsychiatric and dental manifestations, as well as some general ideas on how oxidative stress, pain, music therapy or even irritable bowel syndrome-related manifestations could be relevant in this current context and summarize some current approaches in this matter.

The Cognitive Mechanisms in Music Listening Interventions for Pain: A Scoping Review

Music interventions have been introduced in a range of pain management contexts, yet considerable inconsistencies have been identified across evaluation studies. These inconsistencies have been attributed to a lack of clarity around the prospective cognitive mechanisms of action underlying such interventions. The current systematic scoping review was conducted to examine the theoretical rationales provided in the literature for introducing music listening interventions (MLIs) in pain contexts. 3 search terms (music, listening, and pain) were used in four electronic databases, and 75 articles were included for analysis. Content analysis was used to identify that more intensive listening schedules were associated with chronic and cancer pain compared with procedural pain. The degree to which patients had a choice over the music selection could be categorized into 1 of 5 levels. Thematic synthesis was then applied to develop 5 themes that describe the cognitive mechanisms involved in MLIs for pain. These mechanisms were brought together to build the Cognitive Vitality Model, which emphasizes the role of individual agency in mediating the beneficial effects of music listening through the processes of Meaning-Making, Enjoyment, and Musical Integration. Finally, content analysis was used to demonstrate that only a small proportion of studies were explicitly designed to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying MLIs and we have suggested ways to improve future practice and empirical research. We call on researchers to design and evaluate MLIs in line with the Cognitive Vitality Model of music listening interventions for pain.

Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia

The experience of aesthetic chills, often defined as a subjective response accompanied by goosebumps, shivers and tingling sensations, is a phenomenon often utilized to indicate moments of peak pleasure and emotional arousal in psychological research. However, little is currently understood about how to conceptualize the experience, particularly in terms of whether chills are general markers of intense pleasure and emotion, or instead a collection of distinct phenomenological experiences. To address this, a web-study was designed using images, videos, music videos, texts and music excerpts (from both an online forum dedicated to chills-eliciting stimuli and previous musical chills study), to explore variations across chills experience in terms of bodily and emotional responses reported. Results suggest that across participants (N = 179), three distinct chills categories could be identified: warm chills (chills co-occurring with smiling, warmth, feeling relaxed, stimulated and happy), cold chills (chills co-occurring with frowning, cold, sadness and anger), and moving chills (chills co-occurring with tears, feeling a lump in the throat, emotional intensity, and feelings of affection, tenderness and being moved). Warm chills were linked to stimuli expressing social communion and love; cold chills were elicited by stimuli portraying entities in distress, and support from one to another; moving chills were elicited by most stimuli, but their incidence were also predicted by ratings of trait empathy. Findings are discussed in terms of being moved, the importance of differing induction mechanisms such as shared experience and empathic concern, and the implications of distinct chills categories for both individual differences and inconsistencies in the existing aesthetic chills literature.

Empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination through music

Coordinated behavior promotes collaboration among humans. To shed light upon this relationship, we investigated whether and how interpersonal coordination is promoted by empathic perspective taking (EPT). In a joint music-making task, pairs of participants rotated electronic music-boxes, producing two streams of musical sounds that were meant to be played synchronously. Participants – who were not musically trained – were assigned to high and low EPT groups based on pre-experimental assessments using a standardized personality questionnaire. Results indicated that high EPT pairs were generally more accurate in synchronizing their actions. When instructed to lead the interaction, high and low EPT leaders were equally cooperative with followers, making their performance tempo more regular, presumably in order to increase their predictability and help followers to synchronize. Crucially, however, high EPT followers were better able to use this information to predict leaders’ behavior and thus improve interpersonal synchronization. Thus, empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination by enhancing accuracy in predicting others’ behavior while leaving the aptitude for cooperation unaltered. We argue that such predictive capacity relies on a sensorimotor mechanism responsible for simulating others’ actions in an anticipatory manner, leading to behavioral advantages that may impact social cognition on a broad scale.

Music enhances activity in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and anterior cerebellum during script-driven imagery of affective scenes

Music is frequently used to establish atmosphere and to enhance/alter emotion in dramas and films. During music listening, visual imagery is a common mechanism underlying emotion induction. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined the neural substrates of the emotional processing of music and imagined scene. A factorial design was used with factors emotion valence (positive; negative) and music (withoutMUSIC: script-driven imagery of emotional scenes; withMUSIC: script-driven imagery of emotional scenes and simultaneously listening to affectively congruent music). The baseline condition was imagery of neutral scenes in the absence of music. Eleven females and five males participated in this fMRI study. Behavioural data revealed that during scene imagery, participants' subjective emotions were significantly intensified by music. The contrasts of positive and negative withoutMUSIC conditions minus the baseline (imagery of neutral scenes) showed no significant activation. When comparing the withMUSIC to withoutMUSIC conditions, activity in a number of emotion-related regions was observed, including the temporal pole (TP), amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, anterior ventral tegmental area (VTA), locus coeruleus, and anterior cerebellum. We hypothesized that the TP may integrate music and the imagined scene to extract socioemotional significance, initiating the subcortical structures to generate subjective feelings and bodily responses. For the withMUSIC conditions, negative emotions were associated with enhanced activation in the posterior VTA compared to positive emotions. Our findings replicated and extended previous research which suggests that different subregions of the VTA are sensitive to rewarding and aversive stimuli. Taken together, this study suggests that emotional music embedded in an imagined scenario is a salient social signal that prompts preparation of approach/avoidance behaviours and emotional responses in listeners.

Heart Rate Variability as an Indicator of Nociceptive Pain in Disorders of Consciousness?

CONTEXT

Heart rate variability is thought to reflect the affective and physiological aspects of pain and is emerging as a possible descriptor of the functional brain organization contributing to homeostasis.

OBJECTIVES

To investigate whether the short-term Complexity Index (CIs), a measure of heart rate variability complexity is useful to discriminate responses to potentially noxious and nonnoxious stimulation in patients with different levels of consciousness.

METHODS

Twenty-two patients (11 minimally conscious state [MCS], 11 vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome [VS/UWS]) and 14 healthy controls (HC) were enrolled. We recorded the electrocardiographic response and calculated the CIs before (baseline), during, and after nonnoxious and noxious stimulation. Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon's tests were used to investigate differences in CIs according to the level of consciousness (i.e., HC vs. patients and VS/UWS vs. MCS) and the three conditions (i.e., baseline, nonnoxious, noxious). The correlation between the three conditions and the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised was investigated by Spearman's correlations.

RESULTS

We observed higher CIs values in HC as compared with patients during the baseline (P < 0.034) and after the noxious stimulation (P < 0.0001). We also found higher values in MCS versus VS/UWS patients after the noxious condition (P < 0.001) and lower values in the noxious versus nonnoxious condition solely for the VS/UWS group (P < 0.007). A correlation was found between CIs in noxious condition and Coma Recovery Scale-Revised scores.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest a less complex autonomic response to noxious stimuli in VS/UWS patients. Such method may help to better understand sympathovagal response to potentially painful stimulation in brain-injured patients.

Validation of the German Version of the Music-Empathizing-Music-Systemizing (MEMS) Inventory (Short Version)

Background: Kreutz et al. (2008) developed the Music-Empathizing-Music-Systemizing (ME-MS) Inventory to extend Baron-Cohen's cognitive style theory to the domain of music. We sought to confirm the ME-MS construct in a German sample and to explore these individual differences in relation to music preferences.

Methods: The German adaptation of the MEMS Inventory was achieved by forward and backward translation. A total of 1014 participants (532 male, age: 33.79 ± 11.89 years) completed the 18-item short version of the MEMS Inventory online. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed and cut-off values were established to identify individuals who could be classified as ME, Balanced, or MS. Statistical analyses were used to examine differences in music preference based on music-related cognitive styles.

Results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed two factors, ME and MS, with sufficiently good fit (CFI = 0.87; GFI = 0.93) and adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha ME: 0.753, MS: 0.783). Analyses of difference scores allowed for a classification as either ME, Balanced, or MS. ME and MS differed in sociodemographic variables, preferred music genres, preferred reasons for music listening, musical expertise, situations in which music is listened to in daily life, and frequency of music-induced chills.

Discussion: The German short version of the MEMS Inventory shows good psychometric properties. Based on the cut-off values, differences in music preference were found. Consequently, ME and MS use music in different ways, and the cognitive style of music listening thus appears to be an important moderator in research on the psychology of music. Future research should identify behavioral and neurophysiological correlates and investigate mechanisms underlying music processing based on these different cognitive styles of music listening.

Neurophysiological Effects of Trait Empathy in Music Listening

The social cognitive basis of music processing has long been noted, and recent research has shown that trait empathy is linked to musical preferences and listening style. Does empathy modulate neural responses to musical sounds? We designed two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments to address this question. In Experiment 1, subjects listened to brief isolated musical timbres while being scanned. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to excerpts of music in four conditions (familiar liked (FL)/disliked and unfamiliar liked (UL)/disliked). For both types of musical stimuli, emotional and cognitive forms of trait empathy modulated activity in sensorimotor and cognitive areas: in the first experiment, empathy was primarily correlated with activity in supplementary motor area (SMA), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and insula; in Experiment 2, empathy was mainly correlated with activity in prefrontal, temporo-parietal and reward areas. Taken together, these findings reveal the interactions between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of empathy in response to musical sounds, in line with recent findings from other cognitive domains.

Explaining the enjoyment of negative emotions evoked by the arts: The need to consider empathy and other underlying mechanisms of emotion induction

Any model aiming to explain the enjoyment of negative emotions in the context of the arts should consider how works of art are able to induce emotional responses in the first place. For instance, research on empathy and the arts suggests that the psychological processes that mediate the enjoyment of sadness and horror may be fundamentally different.

Enhancement of Pleasure during Spontaneous Dance

Dancing emphasizes the motor expression of emotional experiences. The bodily expression of emotions can modulate the subjective experience of emotions, as when adopting emotion-specific postures and faces. Thus, dancing potentially offers a ground for emotional coping through emotional enhancement and regulation. Here we investigated the emotional responses to music in individuals without any prior dance training while they either freely danced or refrained from movement. Participants were also tested while imitating their own dance movements but in the absence of music as a control condition. Emotional ratings and cardio-respiratory measures were collected following each condition. Dance movements were recorded using motion capture. We found that emotional valence was increased specifically during spontaneous dance of groovy excerpts, compared to both still listening and motor imitation. Furthermore, parasympathetic-related heart rate variability (HRV) increased during dance compared to motor imitation. Nevertheless, subjective and physiological arousal increased during movement production, regardless of whether participants were dancing or imitating. Significant correlations were found between inter-individual differences in the emotions experienced during dance and whole-body acceleration profiles. The combination of movement and music during dance results in a distinct state characterized by acutely heightened pleasure, which is of potential interest for the use of dance in therapeutic settings.

Perceiving emotion in non-social targets: The effect of trait empathy on emotional contagion through art

This research examines the role of trait empathy in emotional contagion through non-social targets—art objects. Studies 1a and 1b showed that high- (compared to low-) empathy individuals are more likely to infer an artist’s emotions based on the emotional valence of the artwork and, as a result, are more likely to experience the respective emotions themselves. Studies 2a and 2b experimentally manipulated artists’ emotions via revealing details about their personal life. Study 3 experimentally induced positive vs. negative emotions in individuals who then wrote literary texts. These texts were shown to another sample of participants. High- (compared to low-) empathy participants were more like to accurately identify and take on the emotions ostensibly (Studies 2a and 2b) or actually (Study 3) experienced by the “artists”. High-empathy individuals’ enhanced sensitivity to others’ emotions is not restricted to social targets, such as faces, but extends to products of the human mind, such as objects of art.

Expressive intent, ambiguity, and aesthetic experiences of music and poetry

A growing number of studies are investigating the way that aesthetic experiences are generated across different media. Empathy with a perceived human artist has been suggested as a common mechanism [1]. In this study, people heard 30 s excerpts of ambiguous music and poetry preceded by neutral, positively valenced, or negatively valenced information about the composer's or author's intent. The information influenced their perception of the excerpts-excerpts paired with positive intent information were perceived as happier and excerpts paired with negative intent information were perceived as sadder (although across intent conditions, musical excerpts were perceived as happier than poetry excerpts). Moreover, the information modulated the aesthetic experience of the excerpts in different ways for the different excerpt types: positive intent information increased enjoyment and the degree to which people found the musical excerpts to be moving, but negative intent information increased these qualities for poetry. Additionally, positive intent information was judged to better match musical excerpts and negative intent information to better match poetic excerpts. These results suggest that empathy with a perceived human artist is indeed an important shared factor across experiences of music and poetry, but that other mechanisms distinguish the generation of aesthetic appreciation between these two media.

The effect of context and audio-visual modality on emotions elicited by a musical performance

In this work, we compared emotions induced by the same performance of Schubert Lieder during a live concert and in a laboratory viewing/listening setting to determine the extent to which laboratory research on affective reactions to music approximates real listening conditions in dedicated performances. We measured emotions experienced by volunteer members of an audience that attended a Lieder recital in a church (Context 1) and emotional reactions to an audio-video-recording of the same performance in a university lecture hall (Context 2). Three groups of participants were exposed to three presentation versions in Context 2: (1) an audio-visual recording, (2) an audio-only recording, and (3) a video-only recording. Participants achieved statistically higher levels of emotional convergence in the live performance than in the laboratory context, and the experience of particular emotions was determined by complex interactions between auditory and visual cues in the performance. This study demonstrates the contribution of the performance setting and the performers' appearance and nonverbal expression to emotion induction by music, encouraging further systematic research into the factors involved.

Move me, astonish me… delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top-down and bottom-up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates

This paper has a rather audacious purpose: to present a comprehensive theory explaining, and further providing hypotheses for the empirical study of, the multiple ways by which people respond to art. Despite common agreement that interaction with art can be based on a compelling, and occasionally profound, psychological experience, the nature of these interactions is still under debate. We propose a model, The Vienna Integrated Model of Art Perception (VIMAP), with the goal of resolving the multifarious processes that can occur when we perceive and interact with visual art. Specifically, we focus on the need to integrate bottom-up, artwork-derived processes, which have formed the bulk of previous theoretical and empirical assessments, with top-down mechanisms which can describe how individuals adapt or change within their processing experience, and thus how individuals may come to particularly moving, disturbing, transformative, as well as mundane, results. This is achieved by combining several recent lines of theoretical research into a new integrated approach built around three processing checks, which we argue can be used to systematically delineate the possible outcomes in art experience. We also connect our model's processing stages to specific hypotheses for emotional, evaluative, and physiological factors, and address main topics in psychological aesthetics including provocative reactions-chills, awe, thrills, sublime-and difference between "aesthetic" and "everyday" emotional response. Finally, we take the needed step of connecting stages to functional regions in the brain, as well as broader core networks that may coincide with the proposed cognitive checks, and which taken together can serve as a basis for future empirical and theoretical art research.

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors, and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971) interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness, and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience.

Music and literature: are there shared empathy and predictive mechanisms underlying their affective impact?

It has been suggested that music and language had a shared evolutionary precursor before becoming mainly responsible for the communication of emotive and referential meaning respectively. However, emphasis on potential differences between music and language may discourage a consideration of the commonalities that music and literature share. Indeed, one possibility is that common mechanisms underlie their affective impact, and the current paper carefully reviews relevant neuroscientific findings to examine such a prospect. First and foremost, it will be demonstrated that considerable evidence of a common role of empathy and predictive processes now exists for the two domains. However, it will also be noted that an important open question remains: namely, whether the mechanisms underlying the subjective experience of uncertainty differ between the two domains with respect to recruitment of phylogenetically ancient emotion areas. It will be concluded that a comparative approach may not only help to reveal general mechanisms underlying our responses to music and literature, but may also help us better understand any idiosyncrasies in their capacity for affective impact.

Music, empathy and cultural understanding

In the age of the Internet and with the dramatic proliferation of mobile listening technologies, music has unprecedented global distribution and embeddedness in people's lives. It is a source of intense experiences of both the most intimate and solitary, and public and collective, kinds - from an individual with their smartphone and headphones, to large-scale live events and global simulcasts; and it increasingly brings together a huge range of cultures and histories, through developments in world music, sampling, the re-issue of historical recordings, and the explosion of informal and home music-making that circulates via YouTube. For many people, involvement with music can be among the most powerful and potentially transforming experiences in their lives. At the same time, there has been increasing interest in music's communicative and affective capacities, and its potential to act as an agent of social bonding and affiliation. This review critically discusses a considerable body of research and scholarship, across disciplines ranging from the neuroscience and psychology of music to cultural musicology and the sociology and anthropology of music, that provides evidence for music's capacity to promote empathy and social/cultural understanding through powerful affective, cognitive and social factors; and explores ways in which to connect and make sense of this disparate evidence (and counter-evidence). It reports the outcome of an empirical study that tests one aspect of those claims, demonstrating that 'passive' listening to the music of an unfamiliar culture can significantly change the cultural attitudes of listeners with high dispositional empathy; presents a model that brings together the primary components of the music and empathy research into a single framework; and considers both some of the applications, and some of the shortcomings and problems, of understanding music from the perspective of empathy.

Basic, specific, mechanistic? Conceptualizing musical emotions in the brain

The number of studies investigating music processing in the human brain continues to increase, with a large proportion of them focussing on the correlates of so-called musical emotions. The current Review highlights the recent development whereby such studies are no longer concerned only with basic emotions such as happiness and sadness but also with so-called music-specific or "aesthetic" ones such as nostalgia and wonder. It also highlights how mechanisms such as expectancy and empathy, which are seen as inducing musical emotions, are enjoying ever-increasing investigation and substantiation with physiological and neuroimaging methods. It is proposed that a combination of these approaches, namely, investigation of the precise mechanisms through which so-called music-specific or aesthetic emotions may arise, will provide the most important advances for our understanding of the unique nature of musical experience.

Musical Preferences are Linked to Cognitive Styles

Why do we like the music we do? Research has shown that musical preferences and personality are linked, yet little is known about other influences on preferences such as cognitive styles. To address this gap, we investigated how individual differences in musical preferences are explained by the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory. Study 1 examined the links between empathy and musical preferences across four samples. By reporting their preferential reactions to musical stimuli, samples 1 and 2 (Ns = 2,178 and 891) indicated their preferences for music from 26 different genres, and samples 3 and 4 (Ns = 747 and 320) indicated their preferences for music from only a single genre (rock or jazz). Results across samples showed that empathy levels are linked to preferences even within genres and account for significant proportions of variance in preferences over and above personality traits for various music-preference dimensions. Study 2 (N = 353) replicated and extended these findings by investigating how musical preferences are differentiated by E-S cognitive styles (i.e., 'brain types'). Those who are type E (bias towards empathizing) preferred music on the Mellow dimension (R&B/soul, adult contemporary, soft rock genres) compared to type S (bias towards systemizing) who preferred music on the Intense dimension (punk, heavy metal, and hard rock). Analyses of fine-grained psychological and sonic attributes in the music revealed that type E individuals preferred music that featured low arousal (gentle, warm, and sensual attributes), negative valence (depressing and sad), and emotional depth (poetic, relaxing, and thoughtful), while type S preferred music that featured high arousal (strong, tense, and thrilling), and aspects of positive valence (animated) and cerebral depth (complexity). The application of these findings for clinicians, interventions, and those on the autism spectrum (largely type S or extreme type S) are discussed.

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.