Positive and Negative Music Recognition Reveals a Specialization of Mesio-Temporal Structures in Epileptic Patients

Abstract

AMYGDALA INVOLVEMENT IN FACIAL NEGATIVE EMOTION processing seems to be lateralized. The aim of the present study was to verify the existence of this phenomenon in the music domain and to study asymmetrical processing of emotions by the anteromedial temporal structures. Thirteen epileptic patients with left unilateral resection in the temporal lobe including the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, and anterior temporal pole, and fourteen patients with the same right-sided temporal resection, were asked to identify the emotion conveyed by music selections (happiness, sadness, or anger), and to assess their arousal (relaxing/stimulating aspects) and valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness aspects). The results demonstrated asymmetrical processing of positive emotions towards the left whereas negative (sad and angry) excerpts were either less recognized or confounded in both right and left operations. It seems that this impairment of music emotion recognition is not linked to an impairment of arousal and valence judgments.

Improving Presurgical Evaluation with Regards to Emotional Cognition

“…As a patient, I cannot refrain from extrapolating an impairment to recognizing the emotional state of a loved one by their voice tonality. Emotional recognition that appears to lateralize does not do so in identical ways for all people [1,2]. I want to have as much personalized information on all forms of risk as I can get.…”

“…Overall, the authors believe that resection can impair a patient's ability to perceive danger. Khalfa et al [2] found impairment in rightresected persons' ability to recognize sadness and left -resected persons' ability to recognize happiness and anger. Right -resected individuals' unrecognized sad passages were mistaken as angry.…”

“…J Psychol Clin Psychiatry 2017, 7(5): 00456 done by Gosselin et al [1] & Khalfa et al [2] on surgically treated patients encapsulates the issues of emotion in a methodologically eloquent manner. Music is a prolonged acoustic stimulus with emotional content.…”

“…Subjects then rated each passage with respect to these categories of emotion. In the similar study of Khalfa et al [2] music was chosen to inspire happiness, sadness, or anger. Gosselin et al [1] report that persons having resections on either side correctly identified happy and sad music but showed ambivalence in recognizing scary or peaceful music.…”

Recognition of musical emotions and their perceived intensity after unilateral brain damage

“…For instance, a patient with a right inferior parietal lobe infarct did not perceive any emotion when listening to music, but its music perception and emotion recognition were preserved (Satoh et al, 2011). Case reports (Gosselin et al, 2007;Griffiths et al, 2004;Satoh et al, 2016) and group studies (Gosselin et al, 2011;Jafari et al, 2017;Khalfa et al, 2007Khalfa et al, , 2008 have also reported deficits of music emotion recognition in brain-damaged patients. For instance, patients with unilateral medial temporal lesions showed more difficulties to recognize musical emotions, especially for fearful stimuli (Gosselin et al, 2011), with no clear association to one side of the lesion.…”