Science since antiquity has asked whether mathematical relationships among acoustic frequencies govern musical relationships. Psychophysics rejected frequency ratio theories, focusing on sensory phenomena predicted by linear analysis of sound. Cognitive psychologists have since focused on long-term exposure to the music of one’s culture and short-term sensitivity to statistical regularities. Today evidence is rapidly mounting that oscillatory neurodynamics is an important source of nonlinear auditory responses. This leads us to reevaluate the significance of frequency relationships in the perception of music. Here, we present a dynamical systems analysis of mode-locked neural oscillation that predicts cross-cultural invariances in music perception and cognition. We show that this theoretical framework combines with short- and long-term learning to explain the perception of Hindustani rāgas, not only by encultured Indian listeners but also by Western listeners unfamiliar with the style. These findings demonstrate that intrinsic neurodynamics contribute significantly to the perception of musical structure.
Prior expectations can bias evaluative judgments of sensory information. We show that information about a performer’s status can bias the evaluation of musical stimuli, reflected by differential activity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Moreover, we demonstrate that decreased susceptibility to this confirmation bias is (a) accompanied by the recruitment of and (b) correlated with the white-matter structure of the executive control network, particularly related to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). By using long-duration musical stimuli, we were able to track the initial biasing, subsequent perception, and ultimate evaluation of the stimuli, examining the full evolution of these biases over time. Our findings confirm the persistence of confirmation bias effects even when ample opportunity exists to gather information about true stimulus quality, and underline the importance of executive control in reducing bias.
Is there something special about the way music communicates feelings? Theorists since Meyer (1956) have attempted to explain how music could stimulate varied and subtle affective experiences by violating learned expectancies, or by mimicking other forms of social interaction. Our proposal is that music speaks to the brain in its own language; it need not imitate any other form of communication. We review recent theoretical and empirical literature, which suggests that all conscious processes consist of dynamic neural events, produced by spatially dispersed processes in the physical brain. Intentional thought and affective experience arise as dynamical aspects of neural events taking place in multiple brain areas simultaneously. At any given moment, this content comprises a unified “scene” that is integrated into a dynamic core through synchrony of neuronal oscillations. We propose that (1) neurodynamic synchrony with musical stimuli gives rise to musical qualia including tonal and temporal expectancies, and that (2) music-synchronous responses couple into core neurodynamics, enabling music to directly modulate core affect. Expressive music performance, for example, may recruit rhythm-synchronous neural responses to support affective communication. We suggest that the dynamic relationship between musical expression and the experience of affect presents a unique opportunity for the study of emotional experience. This may help elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying arousal and valence, and offer a new approach to exploring the complex dynamics of the how and why of emotional experience.
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