Emotional Responses to Music: Shifts in Frontal Brain Asymmetry Mark Periods of Musical Change.

Hussain-Abdulah Arjmand,Jesper Hohagen,Nikki S. Rickard,Bryan Paton

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02044

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated increased activity in brain regions associated with emotion and reward when listening to pleasurable music. Unexpected change in musical features intensity and tempo – and thereby enhanced tension and anticipation – is proposed to be one of the primary mechanisms by which music induces a strong emotional response in listeners. Whether such musical features coincide with central measures of emotional response has not, however, been extensively examined. In this study, subjective and physiological measures of experienced emotion were obtained continuously from 18 participants (12 females, 6 males; 18–38 years) who listened to four stimuli—pleasant music, unpleasant music (dissonant manipulations of their own music), neutral music, and no music, in a counter-balanced order. Each stimulus was presented twice: electroencephalograph (EEG) data were collected during the first, while participants continuously subjectively rated the stimuli during the second presentation. Frontal asymmetry (FA) indices from frontal and temporal sites were calculated, and peak periods of bias toward the left (indicating a shift toward positive affect) were identified across the sample. The music pieces were also examined to define the temporal onset of key musical features. Subjective reports of emotional experience averaged across the condition confirmed participants rated their music selection as very positive, the scrambled music as negative, and the neutral music and silence as neither positive nor negative. Significant effects in FA were observed in the frontal electrode pair FC3–FC4, and the greatest increase in left bias from baseline was observed in response to pleasurable music. These results are consistent with findings from previous research. Peak FA responses at this site were also found to co-occur with key musical events relating to change, for instance, the introduction of a new motif, or an instrument change, or a change in low level acoustic factors such as pitch, dynamics or texture. These findings provide empirical support for the proposal that change in basic musical features is a fundamental trigger of emotional responses in listeners.

Highlights

One of the most intriguing debates in music psychology research is whether the emotions people report when listening to music are ‘real.’ Various authorities have argued that music is one of the most powerful means of inducing emotions, from Tolstoy’s mantra that “music is the shorthand of emotion,” to the deeply researched and influential reference texts of Leonard Meyer (“Emotion and meaning in music”; Meyer, 1956) and Juslin and Sloboda (“The Handbook of music and emotion”; Juslin and Sloboda, 2010)
A central physiological marker was used to investigate the emotional response of music selected by participants to be ‘emotionally powerful’ and pleasant
Frontal asymmetry (FA) peaks were commonly associated with changes in both high and low level music features, including changes in motif, instrument, loudness and pitch, supporting the hypothesis that key events in music are marked by significant physiological changes in the listener

Summary

Introduction

One of the most intriguing debates in music psychology research is whether the emotions people report when listening to music are ‘real.’ Various authorities have argued that music is one of the most powerful means of inducing emotions, from Tolstoy’s mantra that “music is the shorthand of emotion,” to the deeply researched and influential reference texts of Leonard Meyer (“Emotion and meaning in music”; Meyer, 1956) and Juslin and Sloboda (“The Handbook of music and emotion”; Juslin and Sloboda, 2010). Emotions evolved as a response to events in the environment which are potentially significant for the organism’s survival. Key features of these ‘utilitarian’ emotions include goal relevance, action readiness and multicomponentiality (Frijda and Scherer, 2009). Emotions are triggered by events that are appraised as relevant to one’s survival, and help prepare us to respond, for instance via fight or flight. The absence of clear goal implications of music listening, or any need to become ‘action ready,’ challenges the claim that music-induced emotions are real (Kivy, 1990; Konecni, 2013)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion