The gray matter volume of the amygdala is correlated with the perception of melodic intervals: a voxel-based morphometry study.

Xueting Li,Miao Xu,Jia Liu,Feilong Ma,Jiahui Guo,Alain De Beuckelaer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0099889

Abstract

Music is not simply a series of organized pitches, rhythms, and timbres, it is capable of evoking emotions. In the present study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was employed to explore the neural basis that may link music to emotion. To do this, we identified the neuroanatomical correlates of the ability to extract pitch interval size in a music segment (i.e., interval perception) in a large population of healthy young adults (N = 264). Behaviorally, we found that interval perception was correlated with daily emotional experiences, indicating the intrinsic link between music and emotion. Neurally, and as expected, we found that interval perception was positively correlated with the gray matter volume (GMV) of the bilateral temporal cortex. More important, a larger GMV of the bilateral amygdala was associated with better interval perception, suggesting that the amygdala, which is the neural substrate of emotional processing, is also involved in music processing. In sum, our study provides one of first neuroanatomical evidence on the association between the amygdala and music, which contributes to our understanding of exactly how music evokes emotional responses.

Highlights

Music is a powerful tool for evoking emotional responses
The peak voxel of the cluster in the right temporal cortex was located in the superior temporal gyrus (MNI coordinate: 70, 234, 2; false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected p, 0.05; Fig. 2A), whereas the peak voxel of the cluster in the left was in the planum polare (MNI coordinate: 246, 210, 28; FDRcorrected p,0.05; Fig. 2B)
This finding is consistent with our hypothesis that larger gray matter volume (GMV) in the amygdala is associated with better interval perception

Summary

Introduction

‘‘Without music, life would be a mistake.’’ — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The music tasks relied on in previous studies focused on certain musical properties, but these studies did not explicitly examine whether these musical properties were linked to emotion (at least they did not report significant statistical results attesting to such links). These studies used small sample sizes (typically less than 100 subjects), resulting in a low probability for detecting the neuroanatomical correlates of music processing (i.e., low statistical power) [41]. Based on previous functional MRI studies that indicate that the amygdala is involved in music processing, we predicted that participants with better interval perception would have a larger amygdala

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion