MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHIC RESPONSES CORRESPONDING TO INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCE OF SOUND FIELDS

Abstract

To investigate human cortical responses that correspond to subjective preference of sound fields, an attempt is made here to analyze the autocorrelation function (ACF) of magnetoencephalography (MEG) under the condition of varying delay time of single reflections. According to previous studies, it is assumed that a similar repetitive feature of the MEG alpha-waves range (8–13 Hz) is related to subjective preference in terms of the effective duration of the ACF. The source signal was the word “piano” which had a 0·35 s duration. The delay time, Δt 1, was varied at five levels (0, 5, 20, 60, and 100 ms). The scale values of the subjective preference of each subject were obtained by the paired-comparison tests. To compare the results of the MEG measurements with the scale values of the subjective preference, combinations of a reference stimulus ( Δt 1=0 ms) and test stimuli ( Δt 1=0, 5, 20, 60, and 100 ms) were presented alternately 50 times, and the MEGs were analyzed. It is found that subjective preference for each individual and the effective duration of the ACF of the MEG alpha waves are linearly related.