A short-term musical training affects implicit emotion regulation only in behaviour but not in brain activity

M Berthold-Losleben,K Losleben,K Amunts,N Kohn,F Schneider,S Papalini,U Habel

doi:10.1186/s12868-021-00636-1

Abstract

BackgroundIn everyday life, negative emotions can be implicitly regulated by positive stimuli, without any conscious cognitive engagement; however, the effects of such implicit regulation on mood and related neuro-mechanisms, remain poorly investigated in literature. Yet, improving implicit emotional regulation could reduce psychological burden and therefore be clinically relevant for treating psychiatric disorders with strong affective symptomatology.ResultsMusic training reduced the negative emotional state elicited by negative odours. However, such change was not reflected at the brain level.ConclusionsIn a context of affective rivalry a musical training enhances implicit regulatory processes. Our findings offer a first base for future studies on implicit emotion regulation in clinical populations.

Highlights

In everyday life, negative emotions can be implicitly regulated by positive stimuli, without any con‐ scious cognitive engagement; the effects of such implicit regulation on mood and related neuro-mecha‐ nisms, remain poorly investigated in literature
In our previous study we have shown that both auditory and olfactory stimuli are able to generate congruent emotions, but the pattern found in affectively rival stimulation suggested that implicit emotion regulation seems to be working uni-directionally in the case of negative olfaction paired with positive music: The music did not relieve the negative affect caused by the smell, but the smell tainting the enjoyment of the music and the overall wellbeing, which renders useful from an evolutionary perspective
Emotion regulation processes might change along the musical training, leading the participants to develop more conscious strategies of emotional regulation that we, perhaps, were not able to catch with this specific Functional magnet resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm [40]

Summary

Introduction

Negative emotions can be implicitly regulated by positive stimuli, without any con‐ scious cognitive engagement; the effects of such implicit regulation on mood and related neuro-mecha‐ nisms, remain poorly investigated in literature. This regulation has historically been seen as the result of bottom-up or top-down brain activation processes, describing mainly cortical-subcortical interactions Both carry salient information about our internal and/or external environment, As a matter of fact, our affective state is often generated and updated by multisensory incoming stimuli which can be of conflicting nature [13]. Difficulties in regulating emotions can converge into dysregulated mood states that have the potential to contribute as risk factor to the development of affective disorders, such as pathological anxiety and clinical depression [14,15,16]. To eventually aid treatment of affective disorders we aim to train adaptive emotion regulation on incongruent emotional states, at first in healthy volunteers in the present

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