Music has the capacity to elicit strong positive feelings in humans by activating the brain's reward system. Because group emotional dynamics is a central concern of social neurosciences, the study of emotion in natural/ecological conditions is gaining interest. This study aimed to show that high-density EEG (HD-EEG) is able to reveal patterns of cerebral activities previously identified by fMRI or PET scans when the subject experiences pleasurable musical chills. We used HD-EEG to record participants (11 female, 7 male) while listening to their favorite pleasurable chill-inducing musical excerpts; they reported their subjective emotional state from low pleasure up to chills. HD-EEG results showed an increase of theta activity in the prefrontal cortex when arousal and emotional ratings increased, which are associated with orbitofrontal cortex activation localized using source localization algorithms. In addition, we identified two specific patterns of chills: a decreased theta activity in the right central region, which could reflect supplementary motor area activation during chills and may be related to rhythmic anticipation processing, and a decreased theta activity in the right temporal region, which may be related to musical appreciation and could reflect the right superior temporal gyrus activity. The alpha frontal/prefrontal asymmetry did not reflect the felt emotional pleasure, but the increased frontal beta to alpha ratio (measure of arousal) corresponded to increased emotional ratings. These results suggest that EEG may be a reliable method and a promising tool for the investigation of group musical pleasure through musical reward processing.

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Group emotional dynamics are a central concern in the study of human interaction and communication. To study group emotions, the social context of a musical event in natural conditions may overcome several limits of laboratory experiments and could provide a suitable framework. This study aimed to evaluate if cultural events such as a conductor competition could welcome scientific research for the study of group emotional sharing. We led an observational study, which suggests that in this particular context, public, musicians and jury would agree to participate and to wear neurophysiological and physiological devices to monitor their emotional state during the competition. Self-administrated scales showed that, in the context of a musical competition, members of the public felt strong musical emotions such as music chills. Our results suggest that such a specific competition design is a suitable experimental model to lead an experiment under ecological conditions to effectively investigate collective emotional synchronization. In the future, with the implementation of an acquisition system recording synchronous neurophysiological data for a large group of participants, we may be able to highlight mechanisms involved in emotional synchronization in a natural musical setting.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between trait impulsivity, risk-taking, and decision-making performance. We recruited 20 healthy participants who performed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) to measure decision-making and risk-taking. The impulsivity was measured by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. Resting-state neural activity was recorded to explore whether brain oscillatory rhythms provide important information about the dispositional trait of impulsivity. We found a significant correlation between the ability to develop a successful strategy and the propensity to take more risks in the first trials of the BART. Risk-taking was negatively correlated with cognitive impulsivity in participants who were unable to develop a successful strategy. Neither risk-taking nor decision-making was correlated with cortical asymmetry. In a more exploratory approach, the group was sub-divided in function of participants’ performances at the IGT. We found that the group who developed a successful strategy at the IGT was more prone to risk, whereas the group who failed showed a greater cognitive impulsivity. These results emphasize the need for individuals to explore their environment to develop a successful strategy in uncertain situations, which may not be possible without taking risks.

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