Abstract
Music has been present in human culture since time immemorial, some say music came even before speech. The effort to understand the wide variety of emotions evoked by music has started not long back. With the advent and rapid growth of various neurological bio-sensors we can now attempt to quantify various dimensions of emotional experience induced by music especially instrumental music – since it is free from any language barriers. In this study, we took eight (8) cross cultural instrumental clips originating mainly from Indian and Western music. A listening test comprising of 100 participants across the globe was conducted to associate each clip with its corresponding emotional valence. The participants were asked to mark each clip according to their perception of four basic emotions (joy/sorrow and anxiety/serenity) invoked by each instrumental clip. EEG study was then conducted on 10 participants to measure the response evoked by the same instrumental clips in the alpha and theta frequency regions. We took the help of latest non-linear multi-fractal analysis technique – MFDFA to estimate the change in multi-fractal spectral width (corresponding to alpha as well as theta waves) associated with each of the clips in frontal, temporal and occipital lobes. The response in the alpha domain reveals a hint in the direction of universality of music, while in theta domain we have culture specific response. Moreover, we tried to develop alpha as well as theta multi-fractal spectral width as a single parameter with which we can quantify the valence and arousal based effects corresponding to a particular musical clip. The results and implications are discussed in detail.
Highlights
Music is a common phenomenon that crosses all borders of nationality, race, and culture
In a similar manner Clips 3/4 have been reported with 95% accuracy to convey anxiety while Clips 5/6 have been shown to be calm with 80% and 70% accuracy respectively
We have identified the arousal and valence corresponding to each instrumental clip and standardized the emotional appraisal pertaining to the clips
Summary
Music is a common phenomenon that crosses all borders of nationality, race, and culture. A tool for arousing emotions and feelings, music is said to be far more powerful than language. An increased interest in how the brain processes musical emotion can be attributed to the way in which it is described as a “language of emotion” across cultures [1]. Earlier studies have found that listening and training in instrumental music has positive effects on cognitive development in children [3]. People perform logic tasks better in the presence of instrumental music as opposed to vocal music, according to another study [7]. Researchers found that those listening to classical music seemed more involved in the task, possibly brought on by the
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