Music-induced Emotions Research Articles

The Role of Embodied Simulation and Visual Imagery in Emotional Contagion with Music

Emotional contagion has been explained as arising from embodied simulation. The two most accepted theories of music-induced emotions presume a mechanism of internal mimicry: the BRECVEMA framework proposes that the melodic aspect of music elicits internal mimicry leading to the induction of basic emotions in the listener, and the Multifactorial Process Model proposes that the observation or imagination of motor expressions of the musicians elicits muscular and neural mimicry, and emotional contagion. Two behavioral studies investigated whether, and to what extent, mimicry is responsible for emotion contagion, and second, to what extent context for affective responses in the form of visual imagery moderates emotional responses. Experiment 1 tested whether emotional contagion is influenced by mimicry by manipulating explicit vocal and motor mimicry. In one condition, participants engaged in mimicry of the melodic aspects of the music by singing along with the music, and in another, participants engaged in mimicry of the musician’s gestures when producing the music, by playing along (“air guitar”-style). The experiment did not find confirmatory evidence for either hypothesized simulation mechanism, but it did provide evidence of spontaneous visual imagery consistent with the induced and perceived emotions. Experiment 2 used imagined rather than performed mimicry, but found no association between imagined motor simulation and emotional intensity. Emotional descriptions read prior to hearing the music influenced the type of perceived and induced emotions and support the prediction that visual imagery and associated semantic knowledge shape listeners’ affective experiences with music. The lack of evidence for the causal role of embodied simulation suggests that current theorization of emotion contagion by music needs refinement to reduce the role of simulation relative to other mechanisms. Evidence for induction of affective states that can be modulated by contextual and semantic associations suggests a model of emotion induction consistent with constructionist accounts.

The effect of music-induced emotion on visual-spatial learning in people with Parkinson's disease: A pilot study

IntroductionEmotional states have been shown to influence cognitive processes including visual-spatial learning. Parkinson's Disease (PD), besides manifesting with the cardinal motor symptoms, presents cognitive and affective disturbances. Here we aimed at investigating whether manipulation of the emotional state by means of music was able to influence the performance of a visual-spatial learning task in a group of PD participants. MethodsTen PD patients and 11 healthy elderly (ELD) were asked to perform a visual-spatial learning task while listening two musical pieces evoking a neutral emotion or fear. Targets were presented on a screen in a preset order over four blocks and subjects were asked to learn the sequence order by attending to the display. At the end of each block, participants were asked to verbally recall the sequence and a score was assigned (Verbal Score, VS). ResultsAnalysis of variance-type statistic test on the VS disclosed a significant effect of Music and sequence Blocks (p = 0.01 and p < 0.001, respectively) and a significant interaction between Group and sequence Blocks. Sequence learning occurred across the training period in both groups, but PD patients were slower than ELD and at the end of the training period learning performance was worse in PD with respect to ELD. In PD patients, like in ELD, fear-inducing music has a detrimental effect on visual-spatial learning performances, which are slower and decreased. ConclusionThese findings confirm an impairment in visual-spatial learning in PD and indicates that the emotional state influences this learning ability similarly to healthy controls.

Music-induced emotions influence intertemporal decision making

ABSTRACT People tend to choose smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. This phenomenon is thought to be associated with emotional engagement. However, few studies have demonstrated the real-time impact of incidental emotions on intertemporal choices. This research investigated the effects of music-induced incidental emotions on intertemporal choices, during which happy or sad music was played simultaneously. We found that music-induced happiness made participants prefer smaller-but-sooner rewards (SS), whereas music-induced sadness made participants prefer larger-but-later rewards (LL). Time perception partially mediated this effect: the greater the perceived temporal difference, the more likely they were to prefer SS. Tempo and mode were then manipulated to disentangle the effects of arousal and mood on intertemporal choices. Only tempo-induced arousal, but not mode-induced mood, affected intertemporal choices. These results suggest the role of arousal in intertemporal decision making and provide evidence in support of equate-to-differentiate theory with regard to the non-compensatory mechanism in intertemporal choices.

Influence of Music Intervention on Emotional Control and Mental Health Management Self-efficacy of College Students

Music can induce strong emotions and psychological changes. The emotional control and mental health management of college students are greatly affected by gender, family background, grade, and other factors. Through music intervention, this paper explores how music-induced emotions influence the emotional control and mental health management self-efficacy of college students. The results show that positive music promotes the control of positive emotions, as positive music can give full play to active emotions; negative music both controls and enhances the negative emotions of college students; music intervention significantly affects the pleasantness dimension of the mental health of college students, but insignificantly affects the arousal dimension. The research findings lay a basis for further studies on emotional control and mental health management of college students.

Music in Noise: Neural Correlates Underlying Noise Tolerance in Music-Induced Emotion.

Music can be experienced in various acoustic qualities. In this study, we investigated how the acoustic quality of the music can influence strong emotional experiences, such as musical chills, and the neural activity. The music’s acoustic quality was controlled by adding noise to musical pieces. Participants listened to clear and noisy musical pieces and pressed a button when they experienced chills. We estimated neural activity in response to chills under both clear and noisy conditions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The behavioral data revealed that compared with the clear condition, the noisy condition dramatically decreased the number of chills and duration of chills. The fMRI results showed that under both noisy and clear conditions the supplementary motor area, insula, and superior temporal gyrus were similarly activated when participants experienced chills. The involvement of these brain regions may be crucial for music-induced emotional processes under the noisy as well as the clear condition. In addition, we found a decrease in the activation of the right superior temporal sulcus when experiencing chills under the noisy condition, which suggests that music-induced emotional processing is sensitive to acoustic quality.

The role of music-induced emotions on recognition memory of filmed events

The present study investigated the effects of pairing a comedic movie trailer with emotive music on subsequent recognition memory of the events depicted in the trailer. In an independent groups design, the comedic trailer was paired with happy music (congruent condition) or sad music (incongruent condition). A no music condition served as the control condition. The results showed that participants in the incongruent condition displayed a recognition memory advantage for visual test items over participants in the congruent and control conditions. While changes in self-reported positive and negative affect did not correlate significantly with recognition memory, the perception of emotion-specific categories did. These findings help to establish an empirical basis of ironic contrast techniques and propose an affective component in the integration and representation of audiovisual action that is likely to emerge where a participant perceives or recognizes expressed emotions in music, without necessarily feeling an overall positive or negative affect.

Multimodal recognition of emotions in music and language

We investigated through electrophysiological recordings how music-induced emotions are recognized and combined with the emotional content of written sentences. Twenty-four sad, joyful, and frightening musical tracks were presented to 16 participants reading 270 short sentences conveying a sad, joyful, or frightening emotional meaning. Audiovisual stimuli could be emotionally congruent or incongruent with each other; participants were asked to pay attention and respond to filler sentences containing cities’ names, while ignoring the rest. The amplitude values of event-related potentials (ERPs) were subjected to repeated measures ANOVAs. Distinct electrophysiological markers were identified for the processing of stimuli inducing fear (N450, either linguistic or musical), for language-induced sadness (P300) and for joyful music (positive P2 and LP potentials). The music/language emotional discordance elicited a large N400 mismatch response ( p = .032). Its stronger intracranial source was the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) devoted to multisensory integration of emotions. The results suggest that music can communicate emotional meaning as distinctively as language.

Decoding Music-Evoked Emotions in the Auditory and Motor Cortex.

Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n = 102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their hemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict hemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the auditory, somatosensory, and motor cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, and precuneus. Fear and liking also engaged the amygdala. In contrast, the film clips strongly activated limbic and cortical regions implicated in emotional processing. MVPA revealed that activity in the auditory cortex and primary motor cortices reliably discriminated the emotion categories. Our results indicate that different music-induced basic emotions have distinct representations in regions supporting auditory processing, motor control, and interoception but do not strongly rely on limbic and medial prefrontal regions critical for emotions with survival value.

Efficacy, Treatment Characteristics, and Biopsychological Mechanisms of Music-Listening Interventions in Reducing Pain (MINTREP): Study Protocol of a Three-Armed Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Pain can severely compromise a person's overall health and well-being. Music-listening interventions have been shown to alleviate perceived pain and to modulate the body's stress-sensitive systems. Despite the growing evidence of pain- and stress-reducing effects of music-listening interventions from experimental and clinical research, current findings on music-induced analgesia are inconclusive regarding the role of specific treatment characteristics and the biopsychological mechanisms underlying these effects.Objective: The overall aim of this pilot randomized controlled trial is to test and compare the differential effects of frequency-modulated and unmodulated music (both researcher-selected) on experimentally induced perception of acute pain and to test the efficacy of the interventions in reducing biological and subjective stress levels. Moreover, these two interventions will be compared to a third condition, in which participants listen to self-selected unmodulated music.Methods and Analysis: A total of 90 healthy participants will be randomly allocated to one of the three music-listening intervention groups. Each intervention encompasses 10 sessions of music listening in our laboratory. Frequency-modulation will involve stepwise filtering of frequencies in the audible range of 50–4,000 Hz. Acute pain will be induced via the cold pressor test. Primary (i.e., pain tolerance, perceived pain intensity) and secondary (i.e., heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, hair cortisol, subjective stress) outcomes will be measured at baseline, post, and follow-up. In addition, intermittent measurements as well as a follow-up assessment and a range of tertiary measures (e.g., music-induced emotions) are included.Discussion: This is the first study to systematically test and compare the effects of music frequencies along with the control over music selection, both of which qualify as central treatment characteristics of music-listening interventions. Results will be highly informative for the design of subsequent large-scale clinical trials and provide valuable conclusions for the implementation of music-listening interventions for the reduction of perceived pain.Clinical Trial Registration: Clinical Trials Database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine: Identifier NCT02991014.

What do we actually measure as music-induced emotions?

The paper presents the results of a systematic review of 61 empirical studies in which emotions in response to music were measured. The analysis of each study was focused on the measurement of emotion components and the conceptualization of emotion both in hypothesis and discussion. The review does not support the claim that music evokes the same emotional reactions as life events do, especially modal emotions. Notably, neither a high intensity of feelings, nor intentionality were confirmed in relation to musical experiences, the emergence of specific action tendencies, or specific physiological changes. Based on the obtained results, it is recommended to use the terms “affect” or “music emotions” with reference to emotions experienced in reaction to music and to abandon the term “emotions” as misleading.

A Systematic Literature Review of Neuroimaging Research on Music-Induced Emotion

A Systematic Literature Review of Neuroimaging Research on Music-Induced Emotion

Saccadic Eye-Movements Suppress Visual Mental Imagery and Partly Reduce Emotional Response During Music Listening

Visual mental imagery has been proposed to be an underlying mechanism of music-induced emotion, yet very little is known about the phenomenon due to its ephemeral nature. The present study utilised a saccadic eye-movement task designed to suppress visual imagery during music listening. Thirty-five participants took part in Distractor (eye-movement) and Control (blank screen) conditions, and reported the prevalence, control, and vividness of their visual imagery, and felt emotion ratings using the GEMS-9 in response to short excerpts of film music. The results show that the eye-movement task was highly effective in reducing ratings for prevalence and vividness of visual imagery, and for one GEMS item, Nostalgia, but was not successful in reducing control of imagery or the remaining GEMS items in response to the music. This represents a novel approach to understanding the potentially causal role of visual imagery on music-induced emotion, on which future research can build by considering the attentional mechanisms that a distraction task may pose during music-induced visual imagery formation.

The Effect of Emotional Valence on Ventricular Repolarization Dynamics Is Mediated by Heart Rate Variability: A Study of QT Variability and Music-Induced Emotions.

BackgroundEmotions can affect cardiac activity, but their impact on ventricular repolarization variability, an important parameter providing information about cardiac risk and autonomic nervous system activity, is unknown. The beat-to-beat variability of the QT interval (QTV) from the body surface ECG is a non-invasive marker of repolarization variability, which can be decomposed into QTV related to RR variability (QTVrRRV) and QTV unrelated to RRV (QTVuRRV), with the latter thought to be a marker of intrinsic repolarization variability.AimTo determine the effect of emotional valence (pleasant and unpleasant) on repolarization variability in healthy volunteers by means of QTV analysis.Methods75 individuals (24.5 ± 3.2 years, 36 females) without a history of cardiovascular disease listened to music-excerpts that were either felt as pleasant (n = 6) or unpleasant (n = 6). Excerpts lasted about 90 s and were presented in a random order along with silent intervals (n = 6). QTV and RRV were derived from the ECG and the time-frequency spectrum of RRV, QTV, QTVuRRV and QTVrRRV as well as time-frequency coherence between QTV and RRV were estimated. Analysis was performed in low-frequency (LF), high frequency (HF) and total spectral bands.ResultsThe heart rate-corrected QTV showed a small but significant increase from silence (median 347/interquartile range 31 ms) to listening to music felt as unpleasant (351/30 ms) and pleasant (355/32 ms). The dynamic response of QTV to emotional valence showed a transient phase lasting about 20 s after the onset of each musical excerpt. QTV and RRV were highly correlated in both HF and LF (mean coherence ranging 0.76–0.85). QTV and QTVrRRV decreased during listening to music felt as pleasant and unpleasant with respect to silence and further decreased during listening to music felt as pleasant. QTVuRRV was small and not affected by emotional valence.ConclusionEmotional valence, as evoked by music, has a small but significant effect on QTV and QTVrRRV, but not on QTVuRRV. This suggests that the interaction between emotional valence and ventricular repolarization variability is mediated by cycle length dynamics and not due to intrinsic repolarization variability.

How destination music affects tourists’ behaviors: travel with music in Lijiang, China

ABSTRACTRecent music tourism researches are notable owing to growing socioeconomic significance of music. But the question about how music affects tourists’ behaviors in travel practice remains there. This study explores the effects of music on tourists’ behaviors by deploying a survey of tourists in Lijiang old town which is famous for abundant musical cultures. Results show that tourists’ behavioral intentions are influenced by music-induced emotions which are stimulated by music perception and music cognition. This paper provides a new insight into music characteristics in tourism and new ways for how tourism destinations engage with music.

Electroencephalography reflects the activity of sub-cortical brain regions during approach-withdrawal behaviour while listening to music

The ability of music to evoke activity changes in the core brain structures that underlie the experience of emotion suggests that it has the potential to be used in therapies for emotion disorders. A large volume of research has identified a network of sub-cortical brain regions underlying music-induced emotions. Additionally, separate evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) studies suggests that prefrontal asymmetry in the EEG reflects the approach-withdrawal response to music-induced emotion. However, fMRI and EEG measure quite different brain processes and we do not have a detailed understanding of the functional relationships between them in relation to music-induced emotion. We employ a joint EEG – fMRI paradigm to explore how EEG-based neural correlates of the approach-withdrawal response to music reflect activity changes in the sub-cortical emotional response network. The neural correlates examined are asymmetry in the prefrontal EEG, and the degree of disorder in that asymmetry over time, as measured by entropy. Participants’ EEG and fMRI were recorded simultaneously while the participants listened to music that had been specifically generated to target the elicitation of a wide range of affective states. While listening to this music, participants also continuously reported their felt affective states. Here we report on co-variations in the dynamics of these self-reports, the EEG, and the sub-cortical brain activity. We find that a set of sub-cortical brain regions in the emotional response network exhibits activity that significantly relates to prefrontal EEG asymmetry. Specifically, EEG in the pre-frontal cortex reflects not only cortical activity, but also changes in activity in the amygdala, posterior temporal cortex, and cerebellum. We also find that, while the magnitude of the asymmetry reflects activity in parts of the limbic and paralimbic systems, the entropy of that asymmetry reflects activity in parts of the autonomic response network such as the auditory cortex. This suggests that asymmetry magnitude reflects affective responses to music, while asymmetry entropy reflects autonomic responses to music. Thus, we demonstrate that it is possible to infer activity in the limbic and paralimbic systems from pre-frontal EEG asymmetry. These results show how EEG can be used to measure and monitor changes in the limbic and paralimbic systems. Specifically, they suggest that EEG asymmetry acts as an indicator of sub-cortical changes in activity induced by music. This shows that EEG may be used as a measure of the effectiveness of music therapy to evoke changes in activity in the sub-cortical emotion response network. This is also the first time that the activity of sub-cortical regions, normally considered “invisible” to EEG, has been shown to be characterisable directly from EEG dynamics measured during music listening.

The content and functions of vivid and soothing visual imagery during music listening: Findings from a survey study.

Studies have suggested that visual imagery forms an important part of the listening experience and might be one of the mechanisms by which music induces emotions in a listener. However, little is known about the content, prevalence, and function of visual imagery during music listening. To that end, an online survey was constructed to explore music-related visual imagery. This included 24 statements about visual imagery based on previous research and an open question regarding the content of their inner images. Several standardized questionnaires (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index) were included as well to investigate the link to visual imagery in non-musical contexts and across individuals with various levels of musical training. In total, 669 participants provided responses to an online survey. A factorial structure of music and visual imagery statements provided a three-factor structure consisting of vivid, soothing, and disruptive visual imagery, although the actual factor structure was nonidentical between the musically trained and untrained respondents. Separate analyses of factors for musically trained and untrained participants yielded a more parsimonious structure of visual imagery, which consisted of vivid and soothing visual imagery. These two factors consistently exhibited different weights across the items; for musically trained participants, vivid imagery was more related to modulating arousal than for untrained participants. The ability to conjure up vivid visual imagery was only weakly related to the presence of music-related visual imagery. A content analysis of the open question revealed common themes that related to a mixture of concrete visual imagery (landscapes, images of people, and scenes from past events) and abstract visual imagery (shapes, objects, and colors). Implications of these findings for further studies on music-induced emotions are discussed with a focus on a recent constructionist account of emotional meanings in music.

The audio-visual integration effect on music emotion: Behavioral and physiological evidence.

Previous research has indicated that, compared to audio-only presentation, audio-visual congruent presentation can lead to a more intense emotional response. In the present study, we investigated the audio-visual integration effect on emotions elicited by positive or negative music and the role of visual information presentation durations. The participants were presented with audio-only condition, audio-visual congruent condition, and audio-visual incongruent condition and then required to judge the intensity of emotional experience elicited by the music. Their emotional responses to the music were measured using self-ratings and physiological aspects, including heart rate, skin temperature, EMG root mean square and prefrontal EEG. Relative to the audio-only presentation, the audio-visual congruent presentation led to a more intense emotional response. More importantly, the audio-visual integration occurred both in the positive music and in the negative music. Furthermore, the audio-visual integration effect was larger for positive music than for negative music; meanwhile the audio-visual integration effect was strongest with the visual information presented within 80s for negative music, which indicated that this integration effect was more likely to occur in the negative music. These results suggest that when the music was positive, the effect of audio-visual integration was greater. When the music was negative, the modulation effect of the presentation durations of visual information on the music-induced emotion was more significant.

Instance-Based Genre-Specific Music Emotion Prediction with An EEG Setup.

This paper explores a novel direction in music-induced emotion (music emotion) analysis - the effects of different genres on the prediction of music emotion. We aim to compare the performance of various classifiers in the prediction of the emotion induced by music, as well as to investigate the adaptation of advanced features (such as asymmetries) in improving classification accuracy. The study is supported by real-world experiments where 10 subjects listened to 20 musical pieces from 5 genres- classical, heavy metal, electronic dance music, pop and rap, during which electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected. A maximum 10-fold cross-validation accuracy of 98.4% for subject-independent and 99.0% for subject-dependent data were obtained for the classification of short instances of each song. The emotion of popular music was shown to have been most accurately predicted, with a classification accuracy of 99.6%. Further examination was conducted to investigate the effect of music emotion on the relaxation of subjects while listening.

Music-induced Emotions and Musical Regulation and Emotion Improvement Based on EEG Technology

Musical stimulation can induce emotions as well as adjust and improve emotions, however, for scientific experimental researches on music-induced emotions and music regulation and emotion improvement, it’s not enough just to give proof through scientific experiments, what is more important is further explanation and verification. Further, it is to study in-detail of the impact of music stimuli on the brain and neural mechanism, and how this impact effects the physiological function system of the brain, thus explaining the physiological function system of the human brain. Under the stimulating effect of music, the possible functional changes and the possible outcomes can be used to study the role of music in the clinical treatment and its possible function of musical neurological medical interventions. In this paper, the music fragments of four kinds of emotions soothing, happy, sorrowful, and nervous are selected as stimuli, the EEG is recorded synchronously and analysis is conducted from aspects of brain regions, emotional intensity, and polarity etc.

Music-induced emotion effects on decision-making

This qualitative systematic review aimed to examine music-induced emotion effects on decision-making. Empirical articles published from 2006 to 2016 were searched for in PubMed and PsycInfo. Through the main search, 634 records were identified and 15 articles were included and analyzed according to the following categories: aims of the study, participants, study design, type of music, type of emotion, decision-making tasks, and study results. The included studies aimed to investigate the effects of music on prosociality and aggression, risk-taking, and other decision-making processes. All studies used experimental designs and most of them used pre-selected music and stimulation through music listening. Different decision-making tasks were used, such as a gambling task, helping behavior tasks, and even assessment of aggressive behavior through adding hot chili sauce to food. Results showed that music is a powerful and engaging stimulus that influences decision-making processes and risk-taking, promotes prosociality, and affects customers’ behavioral choices. Different underlying processes in the interaction between music, mood, and decision-making are discussed. This review contributes to promoting research on the use of background music as an arousal and mood inducer in different contexts, as well as music-based interventions to foster prosociality and decrease aggressive behaviors.