Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the Brain

Trost, Wiebke; Ethofer, Thomas; Zentner, Marcel; Vuilleumier, Patrik

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr353

Cited by 239 publications

(295 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Importantly, the activation of striatal nuclei has been reported not only for self-selected familiar music [103,107] or music that expresses and induces (arguably) unambiguously positive emotion such as joy [91,92], but also for unfamiliar music that induced more "complex" but still pleasant emotional responses. In one of the few studies Neuroimaging studies on the neural correlates of music-induced emotions have tended to shy away from functional explanations on why music engages the neural systems outlined above.…”

Section: Neural Correlates Of Music-induced Sadness and Pleasurementioning

confidence: 99%

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

Eerola

Vuoskoski

Peltola

et al. 2018

Physics of Life Reviews

104

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Citation for published item:ierolD F nd uoskoskiD tF uF nd eltolD rFEF nd utkinenD F nd h¤ ferD uF @PHIUA 9en integrtive review of the enjoyment of sdness ssoited with musiF9D hysis of life reviewsF F Further information on publisher's website: httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIHITGjFplrevFPHIUFIIFHIT Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThe recent surge of interest towards the paradoxical pleasure produced by sad music has generated a handful of theories and an array of empirical explorations on the topic. However, none of these have attempted to weigh the existing evidence in a systematic fashion. The present work puts forward an integrative framework laid out over three levels of explanation -biological, psycho-social, and cultural -to compare and integrate the existing findings in a meaningful way. First, we review the evidence pertinent to experiences of pleasure associated with sad music from the fields of neuroscience, psychophysiology, and endocrinology. Then, the psychological and interpersonal mechanisms underlying the recognition and induction of sadness in the context of music are combined with putative explanations ranging from social surrogacy and nostalgia to feelings of being moved. Finally, we address the cultural aspects of the paradox -the extent to which it is embedded in the Western notion of music as an aesthetic, contemplative object -by synthesising findings from history, ethnography, and empirical studies. Furthermore, we complement these explanations by considering the particularly significant life meanings that sadness portrayed in art can evoke in some perceivers. Our central claim is that one cannot attribute the enjoyment of sadness fully to any one of these levels, but to a chain * Corresponding author Email address: tuomas.eerola@durham.ac.uk (Tuomas Eerola)Preprint submitted to Physics of Life Reviews November 10, 2017 of functionalities afforded by each level. Each explanatory level has several putative explanations and its own shift towards positive valence, but none of them deliver the full transformation from a highly negative experience to a fully enjoyable experience alone. The current evidence within this framework ranges from weak to non-existent at the biological level, moderate at the psychological level, and suggestive at the cultural level. We propose a series of focussed topics for future investigation that would allow to deconstruct the drivers and constraints of the processes leading to pleasurable music-related sad...

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Section: Neural Correlates Of Music-induced Sadness and Pleasurementioning

confidence: 99%

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

Eerola

Vuoskoski

Peltola

et al. 2018

Physics of Life Reviews

104

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“…Participants were asked to rate how strongly they had experienced each of the nine GEMS emotional categories (Zentner et al, 2008) during the stimulus presentation. Visual analog scales corresponding to these nine emotions (Joy, Sadness, Tension, Wonder, Peacefulness, Power, Tenderness, Nostalgia, and Transcendence) were displayed on the screen for each musical piece, together with scales for two additional descriptive adjectives (see Supplementary Table 2), in order to disambiguate the meaning of each emotional category, as in previous studies (Trost et al, 2012).…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alteration of complex negative emotions induced by music in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder

Choppin

Trost

Dondaine

et al. 2016

Journal of Affective Disorders

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a b s t r a c tBackground: Research has shown bipolar disorder to be characterized by dysregulation of emotion processing, including biases in facial expression recognition that is most prevalent during depressive and manic states. Very few studies have examined induced emotions when patients are in a euthymic phase, and there has been no research on complex emotions. We therefore set out to test emotional hyperreactivity in response to musical excerpts inducing complex emotions in bipolar disorder during euthymia. Methods: We recruited 21 patients with bipolar disorder (BD) in a euthymic phase and 21 matched healthy controls. Participants first rated their emotional reactivity on two validated self-report scales (ERS and MAThyS). They then rated their music-induced emotions on nine continuous scales. The targeted emotions were wonder, power, melancholy and tension. We used a specific generalized linear mixed model to analyze the behavioral data. Results: We found that participants in the euthymic bipolar group experienced more intense complex negative emotions than controls when the musical excerpts induced wonder. Moreover, patients exhibited greater emotional reactivity in daily life (ERS). Finally, a greater experience of tension while listening to positive music seemed to be mediated by greater emotional reactivity and a deficit in executive functions. Limitations: The heterogeneity of the BD group in terms of clinical characteristics may have influenced the results. Conclusions: Euthymic patients with bipolar disorder exhibit more complex negative emotions than controls in response to positive music.

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“…Previous studies have consistently reported that in addition to sensory and cognitive areas involved in the processing of musical information, such as auditory and frontal cortices (6)(7)(8)(9), music recruits regions of the mesolimbic reward circuitry (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17), especially the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). Most importantly, a recent study (17) has shown that the reward value of a novel piece of music was predicted by the functional connectivity between the NAcc and auditory cortices, as well as regions involved in valuation, such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal regions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia

Martínez‐Molina

Mas‐Herrero

Rodrı́guez-Fornells

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

153

181

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Although music is ubiquitous in human societies, there are some people for whom music holds no reward value despite normal perceptual ability and preserved reward-related responses in other domains. The study of these individuals with specific musical anhedonia may be crucial to understand better the neural correlates underlying musical reward. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that musically induced pleasure may arise from the interaction between auditory cortical networks and mesolimbic reward networks. If such interaction is critical for music-induced pleasure to emerge, then those individuals who do not experience it should show alterations in the cortical-mesolimbic response. In the current study, we addressed this question using fMRI in three groups of 15 participants, each with different sensitivity to music reward. We demonstrate that the music anhedonic participants showed selective reduction of activity for music in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), but normal activation levels for a monetary gambling task. Furthermore, this group also exhibited decreased functional connectivity between the right auditory cortex and ventral striatum (including the NAcc). In contrast, individuals with greater than average response to music showed enhanced connectivity between these structures. Thus, our results suggest that specific musical anhedonia may be associated with a reduction in the interplay between the auditory cortex and the subcortical reward network, indicating a pivotal role of this interaction for the enjoyment of music.Without music, life would be a mistake.Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols T his quote highlights the importance of music for the life of most people. Indeed, although music is not a primary reward (such as food or sex), it is reckoned as one of the most important sources of pleasure in life. Furthermore, music has been present in human societies since prehistory (1), and most of the current literature on music psychology has described it as a universal reward for human beings (2). Its ubiquity and antiquity prove the importance of music in our society (3).Paradoxically, not everybody loves music: A small percentage of healthy individuals do not find music pleasurable, a phenomenon known as specific musical anhedonia (4). A detailed study on this population revealed that this phenomenon cannot be explained by perceptual problems [e.g., hearing impairment or specific impairment in perceptual capabilities, a condition known as amusia (5)] or by general anhedonia (lack of pleasure for all types of rewarding stimuli). When listening to music rated as pleasant by others, people with specific musical anhedonia showed a reduced emotional arousal as indexed by autonomic nervous system activity [in particular, skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate measurements] compared with people having standard or high sensitivity to music. Notably, they showed normal responses to other types of reward [e.g., money (4)]. Therefore, individuals with specific musical anhedonia represent an idea...

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Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the Brain

Cited by 239 publications

References 69 publications

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

Alteration of complex negative emotions induced by music in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder

Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia

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