Emotions are often understood in relation to conditioned responses. Narrative emotions, however, cannot be reduced to a simple associative relationship between emotion words and their experienced counterparts. Intensity in stories may arise without any overt emotion depicting words and vice versa. In this fMRI study we investigated BOLD responses to naturally fluctuating emotions evoked by listening to a story. The emotional intensity profile of the text was found through a rating study. The validity of this profile was supported by heart rate variability (HRV) data showing a significant correspondence across participants between intensity ratings and HRV measurements obtained during fMRI. With this ecologically valid stimulus we found that narrative intensity was accompanied by activation in temporal cortices, medial geniculate nuclei in the thalamus and amygdala, brain regions that are all part of the system for processing conditioned emotional responses to auditory stimuli. These findings suggest that this system also underpins narrative emotions in spite of their complex nature. Traditional language regions and premotor cortices were also activated during intense parts of the story whereas orbitofrontal cortex was found linked to emotion with positive valence, regardless of level of intensity.
Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to identify a musical pitch without a reference, has been examined behaviorally in numerous studies for more than a century, yet only a few studies have examined the neuroanatomical correlates of AP. Here, we used MRI and diffusion tensor imaging to investigate structural differences in brains of musicians with and without AP, by means of whole-brain vertex-wise cortical thickness (CT) analysis and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis. APs displayed increased CT in a number of areas including the bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG), the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the right supramarginal gyrus. Furthermore, we found higher fractional anisotropy in APs within the path of the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, the uncinate fasciculus, and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus. The findings in gray matter support previous studies indicating an increased left lateralized posterior STG in APs, yet they differ from previous findings of thinner cortex for a number of areas in APs. Finally, we found a relation between the white-matter results and the CT in the right parahippocampal gyrus. In this study, we present novel findings in AP research that may have implications for the understanding of the neuroanatomical underpinnings of AP ability.
Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce pitches of musical tones without an external reference. Active AP (i.e., pitch production or pitch adjustment) and passive AP (i.e., pitch identification) are considered to not necessarily coincide, although no study has properly compared these abilities. Using a novel computerized pitch adjustment test, we investigated active AP ability in musicians with and without AP (ages 18-43). We found a significant correlation between active and passive AP indicating that AP possessors (APs) identify and produce pitch equally well. Furthermore, we found that APs generally undershoot when adjusting musical pitch, a tendency that decreases when musical activity increases. Finally, APs are less accurate when adjusting the pitch to black key targets than to white key targets. Hence, AP ability may be partly practice-dependent and we speculate that APs may benefit from frequent contact with fixed standard chroma to keep in tune.
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