The Gray Matter Volume of the Amygdala Is Correlated with the Perception of Melodic Intervals: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

Abstract

Music is not simply a series of organized pitches, rhythms, and timbres, it is capable of evoking emotions. In the present study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was employed to explore the neural basis that may link music to emotion. To do this, we identified the neuroanatomical correlates of the ability to extract pitch interval size in a music segment (i.e., interval perception) in a large population of healthy young adults (N = 264). Behaviorally, we found that interval perception was correlated with daily emotional experiences, indicating the intrinsic link between music and emotion. Neurally, and as expected, we found that interval perception was positively correlated with the gray matter volume (GMV) of the bilateral temporal cortex. More important, a larger GMV of the bilateral amygdala was associated with better interval perception, suggesting that the amygdala, which is the neural substrate of emotional processing, is also involved in music processing. In sum, our study provides one of first neuroanatomical evidence on the association between the amygdala and music, which contributes to our understanding of exactly how music evokes emotional responses.

Functional Plasticity Coupled With Structural Predispositions in Auditory Cortex Shape Successful Music Category Learning

“…Paralleling the left hemisphere bias for speech ( Binder et al, 2004 ; Myers et al, 2009 ; Lee et al, 2012 ; Bouton et al, 2018 ), categorization of musical sounds is believed to involve a frontotemporal network in the right hemisphere, including key brain regions such as the primary auditory cortex (PAC), superior temporal gyrus (STG), and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) ( Klein and Zatorre, 2011 , 2015 ; Bidelman and Walker, 2019 ; Mankel et al, 2020a ; Gertsovski and Ahissar, 2022 ). PAC/STG size (primarily right hemisphere) has also been associated with perception of relative pitch and musical transformation judgments ( Foster and Zatorre, 2010 ), melodic interval perception ( Li et al, 2014 ), spectral processing ( Schneider et al, 2005 ), and even musical aptitude ( Schneider et al, 2002 ). To our knowledge, few studies have examined structural correlates of categorization at the individual level.…”

The neuroanatomical correlates of individual differences in delay discounting: A voxel-based morphometry study

“…We used G*Power to estimate the sample size needed in the present study (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009). Assuming small-to-moderate effect sizes (i.e., r = .1, p = .001), based on the literature (Li et al, 2014), and setting power at 0.8, a sample size of 224 people was suggested. Because multiple corrections are required for a whole-brain analysis in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, in this study we thus recruited 325 college students from Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.…”

Functional plasticity coupled with structural predispositions in auditory cortex shape successful music category learning

“…Paralleling the left hemisphere bias for speech (Binder et al, 2004;Bouton et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2012;Myers et al, 2009), categorization of musical sounds is believed to involve a frontotemporal network in the right hemisphere, including key brain regions such as the primary auditory cortex (PAC), superior temporal gyrus (STG), and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (Bidelman & Walker, 2019;Klein & Zatorre, 2011, 2015Mankel, Barber, et al, 2020). PAC/STG size (primarily right hemisphere) has also been associated with perception of relative pitch and musical transformation judgments (Foster & Zatorre, 2010), melodic interval perception (Li et al, 2014), spectral processing (Schneider et al, 2005), and even musical aptitude (Schneider et al, 2002). To our knowledge, few studies have examined the structural correlates of categorization differences on the individual level.…”