Pitch Syntax Violations Are Linked to Greater Skin Conductance Changes, Relative to Timbral Violations – The Predictive Role of the Reward System in Perspective of Cortico–subcortical Loops

Abstract

According to contemporary opinion emotional reactions to syntactic violations are due to surprise as a result of the general mechanism of prediction. The classic view is that, the processing of musical syntax can be explained by activity of the cerebral cortex. However, some recent studies have indicated that subcortical brain structures, including those related to the processing of emotions, are also important during the processing of syntax. In order to check whether emotional reactions play a role in the processing of pitch syntax or are only the result of the general mechanism of prediction, the comparison of skin conductance levels reacting to three types of melodies were recorded. In this study, 28 subjects listened to three types of short melodies prepared in Musical Instrument Digital Interface Standard files (MIDI) – tonally correct, tonally violated (with one out-of-key – i.e., of high information content), and tonally correct but with one note played in a different timbre. The BioSemi ActiveTwo with two passive Nihon Kohden electrodes was used. Skin conductance levels were positively correlated with the presented stimuli (timbral changes and tonal violations). Although changes in skin conductance levels were also observed in response to the change in timbre, the reactions to tonal violations were significantly stronger. Therefore, despite the fact that timbral change is at least as equally unexpected as an out-of-key note, the processing of pitch syntax mainly generates increased activation of the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system. These results suggest that the cortico–subcortical loops (especially the anterior cingulate – limbic loop) may play an important role in the processing of musical syntax.

Role of expectancy in physiological responses to sound recognition of musical dissonance and timbral change

“…This discrepancy between the frequency of significant SCR events and conscious recognition of alterations is very striking. Our results and those of Gorzelanczyk et al (2017) seem to point out that there is a physiological sensitivity to tone violation. When the listener is consistent with this alteration, this physiological response is present in 69% of cases, but also in 52% of cases where participants did not respond successfully in the task.…”

The Role of the Baldwin Effect in the Evolution of Human Musicality

“…The actual source of emotion is an external stimulus and a prediction process is one of the mechanisms, the function of which is to deliver information about the external world that is assessed by emotions. Moreover, if the emotional effect was solely the result of prediction then the emotional reactions to equally predicted stimuli should be the same, independent of whether they are parts of e.g., musical syntax, speech phonotactics or the sequence of timbres in music (Gorzelańczyk et al, 2017 ). Yet the emotional experience of musical syntactic relations seems qualitatively different from the experience of phonotactics and other syntactically organized sequences.…”

Comparison of Smoothing Filters’ Influence on Quality of Data Recorded with the Emotiv EPOC Flex Brain–Computer Interface Headset during Audio Stimulation

“…Audio stimulation can have strong impact on the examined EEG signal. Those methods can also help to explain the role of cortico-subcortical loops not only in the perspective of physiological control of the majority of sensory-cognitive, emotional, and psycho-motor functions, but also in the explanation of mental disease pathophysiology and the brain structures of the mind [ 68 ].…”