Listening to music in a risk-reward context: The roles of the temporoparietal junction and the orbitofrontal/insular cortices in reward-anticipation, reward-gain, and reward-loss

Motivated cognitive control during cued anticipation and receipt of unfamiliar musical themes: An fMRI study

Principal themes, particularly choruses in pop songs, hold a central place in human music. Singing along with a familiar chorus tends to elicit pleasure and a sense of belonging, especially in group settings. These principal themes, which frequently serve as musical rewards, are commonly preceded by distinctive musical cues. Such cues guide listeners' attention and amplify their motivation to receive the impending themes. Despite the significance of cue-theme sequences in music, the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of these sequences in unfamiliar songs remain underexplored. To fill this research gap, we employed fMRI to examine neural activity during the cued anticipation of unfamiliar musical themes and the subsequent receipt of their opening phrase. Twenty-three Taiwanese participants underwent fMRI scans while listening to excerpts of Korean slow pop songs unfamiliar to them, with lyrics they could not understand. Our findings revealed distinct temporal dynamics in lateral frontal activity, with posterior regions being more active during theme anticipation and anterior regions during theme receipt. During anticipation, participants reported substantial increases in arousal levels, aligning with the observed enhanced activity in the midbrain, ventral striatum, inferior frontal junction, and premotor regions. We posit that when motivational musical cues are detected, the ventral striatum and inferior frontal junction played a role in attention allocation, while premotor regions may be engaged in monitoring the theme's entry. Notably, both the anticipation and receipt of themes were associated with pronounced activity in the frontal eye field, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, dorsal caudate, and salience network. Overall, our results highlight that within a naturalistic music-listening context, the dynamic interplay between the frontoparietal, dopaminergic midbrain-striatal, and salience networks could allow for precise adjustments of control demands based on the cue-theme structure in unfamiliar songs.

Hyperscanning fNIRS data analysis using multiregression dynamic models: an illustration in a violin duo

Introduction

Interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) demands a greater understanding of a brain's influence on others. Therefore, brain synchronization is an even more complex system than intrasubject brain connectivity and must be investigated. There is a need to develop novel methods for statistical inference in this context.

Methods

In this study, motivated by the analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning data, which measure the activity of multiple brains simultaneously, we propose a two-step network estimation: Tabu search local method and global maximization in the selected subgroup [partial conditional directed acyclic graph (DAG) + multiregression dynamic model]. We illustrate this approach in a dataset of two individuals who are playing the violin together.

Results

This study contributes new tools to the social neuroscience field, which may provide new perspectives about intersubject interactions. Our proposed approach estimates the best probabilistic network representation, in addition to providing access to the time-varying parameters, which may be helpful in understanding the brain-to-brain association of these two players.

Discussion

The illustration of the violin duo highlights the time-evolving changes in the brain activation of an individual influencing the other one through a data-driven analysis. We confirmed that one player was leading the other given the ROI causal relation toward the other player.

Prediction errors arising from switches between major and minor modes in music: An fMRI study

The major and minor modes in Western music have positive and negative connotations, respectively. The present fMRI study examined listeners' neural responses to switches between major and minor modes. We manipulated the final chords of J. S. Bach's keyboard pieces so that each major-mode passage ended with either the major (Major-Major) or minor (Major-Minor) tonic chord, and each minor-mode passage ended with either the minor (Minor-Minor) or major (Minor-Major) tonic chord. If the final major and minor chords have positive and negative reward values respectively, the Major-Minor and Minor-Major stimuli would cause negative and positive reward prediction errors (RPEs) respectively in a listener's brain. We found that activity in a frontoparietal network was significantly higher for Major-Minor than for Major-Major. Based on previous research, these results support the idea that a major-to-minor switch causes negative RPE. The contrast of Minor-Major minus Minor-Minor yielded activation in the ventral insula and visual cortex, speaking against the idea that a minor-to-major switch causes positive RPE. We discuss our results in relation to executive functions and the emotional connotations of major versus minor modes.

Attention Control and Audiomotor Processes Underlying Anticipation of Musical Themes while Listening to Familiar Sonata-Form Pieces

When listening to music, people are excited by the musical cues immediately before rewarding passages. More generally, listeners attend to the antecedent cues of a salient musical event irrespective of its emotional valence. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms underlying the cued anticipation of the main theme’s recurrence in sonata form. Half of the main themes in the musical stimuli were of a joyful character, half a tragic character. Activity in the premotor cortex suggests that around the main theme’s recurrence, the participants tended to covertly hum along with music. The anterior thalamus, pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA), posterior cerebellum, inferior frontal junction (IFJ), and auditory cortex showed increased activity for the antecedent cues of the themes, relative to the middle-last part of the themes. Increased activity in the anterior thalamus may reflect its role in guiding attention towards stimuli that reliably predict important outcomes. The preSMA and posterior cerebellum may support sequence processing, fine-grained auditory imagery, and fine adjustments to humming according to auditory inputs. The IFJ might orchestrate the attention allocation to motor simulation and goal-driven attention. These findings highlight the attention control and audiomotor components of musical anticipation.

Musical components important for the Mozart K448 effect in epilepsy

There is growing evidence for the efficacy of music, specifically Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448), at reducing ictal and interictal epileptiform activity. Nonetheless, little is known about the mechanism underlying this beneficial “Mozart K448 effect” for persons with epilepsy. Here, we measured the influence that K448 had on intracranial interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) in sixteen subjects undergoing intracranial monitoring for refractory focal epilepsy. We found reduced IEDs during the original version of K448 after at least 30-s of exposure. Nonsignificant IED rate reductions were witnessed in all brain regions apart from the bilateral frontal cortices, where we observed increased frontal theta power during transitions from prolonged musical segments. All other presented musical stimuli were associated with nonsignificant IED alterations. These results suggest that the “Mozart K448 effect” is dependent on the duration of exposure and may preferentially modulate activity in frontal emotional networks, providing insight into the mechanism underlying this response. Our findings encourage the continued evaluation of Mozart’s K448 as a noninvasive, non-pharmacological intervention for refractory epilepsy.

Motivational system modulates brain responses during exploratory decision-making

Managers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability. To understand what makes a manager effective at explorative decision-making requires an analysis of the manager’s motivational characteristics. The behavioral activation/inhibition system (BAS/BIS), fitting the motivational orientation of “approach” or “avoidance,” can affect individual decision-making. However, very little is known about the neural correlates of BAS/BIS orientation and their interrelationship with the mental activity during explorative decision-making. We conducted an fMRI study on 111 potential managers to investigate how the brain responses of explorative decision-making interact with BAS/BIS. Participants were separated into high- and low-performance groups based on the median exploration-score. The low-performance group showed significantly higher BAS than that of the high-performance group, and its BAS had significant negative association with neural networks related to reward-seeking during explorative decision-making. Moreover, the BIS of the low-performance group was negatively correlated with the activation of cerebral regions responding to risk-choice during explorative decision-making. Our finding showed that BAS/BIS was associated with the brain activation during explorative decision-making only in the low-performance group. This study contributed to the understanding of the micro-foundations of strategically relevant decision-making and has an implication for management development.

Music Improvisation Is Characterized by Increase EEG Spectral Power in Prefrontal and Perceptual Motor Cortical Sources and Can be Reliably Classified From Non-improvisatory Performance

This study expores neural activity underlying creative processes through the investigation of music improvisation. Fourteen guitar players with a high level of improvisation skill participated in this experiment. The experimental task involved playing 32-s alternating blocks of improvisation and scales on guitar. electroencephalography (EEG) data was measured continuously throughout the experiment. In order to remove potential artifacts and extract brain-related activity the following signal processing techniques were employed: bandpass filtering, Artifact Subspace Reconstruction, and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). For each participant, artifact related independent components (ICs) were removed from the EEG data and only ICs found to be from brain activity were retained. Source localization using this brain-related activity was carried out using sLORETA. Greater activity for improvisation over scale was found in multiple frequency bands (theta, alpha, and beta) localized primarily in the medial frontal cortex (MFC), Middle frontal gyrus (MFG), anterior cingulate, polar medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), premotor cortex (PMC), pre and postcentral gyrus (PreCG and PostCG), superior temporal gyrus (STG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and the temporal-parietal junction. Together this collection of brain regions suggests that improvisation was mediated by processes involved in coordinating planned sequences of movement that are modulated in response to ongoing environmental context through monitoring and feedback of sensory states in relation to internal plans and goals. Machine-learning using Common Spatial Patterns (CSP) for EEG feature extraction attained a mean of over 75% classification performance for improvisation vs. scale conditions across participants. These machine-learning results are a step towards the development of a brain-computer interface that could be used for neurofeedback training to improve creativity.

Effects of music therapy on major depressive disorder: A study of prefrontal hemodynamic functions using fNIRS

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a recurrent, chronic mental illness. While music therapy has been established as an effective treatment for MDD patients, the effects of this therapy on brain function remain unclear. This research employed near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to explore the effects of music therapy on brain activity in mild or moderate MDD patients and to illustrate the potential mechanism of music therapy. Methods: Fifteen MDD patients and fifteen healthy controls (HC) underwent neuropsychological evaluations and NIRS measurements. All participants were treated with continuous music therapy for 10 days. Subsequently, all individuals were evaluated with neuropsychological assessments and NIRS measurements again. Results: The verbal fluency task (VFT) performances of the participants yielded significantly higher scores after music therapy in terms of vegetables, four-footed animals and fruit blocks. After the music treatment, the NIRS data showed that the mean active oxy-Hb values of channels 21, 23, 19, and 41 were significantly increased in both the MDD and HC groups. The MDD group showed significant activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) after music therapy. The results indicate that music therapy could improve the brain function of MDD patients.

Music enhances activity in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and anterior cerebellum during script-driven imagery of affective scenes

Music is frequently used to establish atmosphere and to enhance/alter emotion in dramas and films. During music listening, visual imagery is a common mechanism underlying emotion induction. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined the neural substrates of the emotional processing of music and imagined scene. A factorial design was used with factors emotion valence (positive; negative) and music (withoutMUSIC: script-driven imagery of emotional scenes; withMUSIC: script-driven imagery of emotional scenes and simultaneously listening to affectively congruent music). The baseline condition was imagery of neutral scenes in the absence of music. Eleven females and five males participated in this fMRI study. Behavioural data revealed that during scene imagery, participants' subjective emotions were significantly intensified by music. The contrasts of positive and negative withoutMUSIC conditions minus the baseline (imagery of neutral scenes) showed no significant activation. When comparing the withMUSIC to withoutMUSIC conditions, activity in a number of emotion-related regions was observed, including the temporal pole (TP), amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, anterior ventral tegmental area (VTA), locus coeruleus, and anterior cerebellum. We hypothesized that the TP may integrate music and the imagined scene to extract socioemotional significance, initiating the subcortical structures to generate subjective feelings and bodily responses. For the withMUSIC conditions, negative emotions were associated with enhanced activation in the posterior VTA compared to positive emotions. Our findings replicated and extended previous research which suggests that different subregions of the VTA are sensitive to rewarding and aversive stimuli. Taken together, this study suggests that emotional music embedded in an imagined scenario is a salient social signal that prompts preparation of approach/avoidance behaviours and emotional responses in listeners.

Increased activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and temporal pole during tonality change in music

In human music, the tonality (key) may change to punctuate sectional structures and to produce emotional effects. A tonality change would sound "smoother" when it is supported by appropriate harmony. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural substrates of the processing of tonality change. We used a 2 × 2 factorial design with factors tonality change (tonality changed versus tonality unchanged) and harmonization (harmonized versus unharmonized). Participants were asked to covertly sing the pitch names in the movable-do system along with the heard melody. Repetitions of this melody were associated with or without a tonality change, with equal probability in a pseudo-random order. Our result demonstrated that tonality changes elicited increased activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and left temporal pole. When a tonality change occurred, the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex might underpin the cognitive control for retrieving the pitch-naming rule of the new tonality, whereas the left temporal pole might integrate the melodic/harmonic context and emotional meanings of music. This study provides a new insight into the cognitive and emotional processing of music.

Music models aberrant rule decoding and reward valuation in dementia

Aberrant rule- and reward-based processes underpin abnormalities of socio-emotional behaviour in major dementias. However, these processes remain poorly characterized. Here we used music to probe rule decoding and reward valuation in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) syndromes and Alzheimer's disease (AD) relative to healthy age-matched individuals. We created short melodies that were either harmonically resolved ('finished') or unresolved ('unfinished'); the task was to classify each melody as finished or unfinished (rule processing) and rate its subjective pleasantness (reward valuation). Results were adjusted for elementary pitch and executive processing; neuroanatomical correlates were assessed using voxel-based morphometry. Relative to healthy older controls, patients with behavioural variant FTD showed impairments of both musical rule decoding and reward valuation, while patients with semantic dementia showed impaired reward valuation but intact rule decoding, patients with AD showed impaired rule decoding but intact reward valuation and patients with progressive non-fluent aphasia performed comparably to healthy controls. Grey matter associations with task performance were identified in anterior temporal, medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices, previously implicated in computing diverse biological and non-biological rules and rewards. The processing of musical rules and reward distils cognitive and neuroanatomical mechanisms relevant to complex socio-emotional dysfunction in major dementias.

Interactive effects of music and prefrontal cortex stimulation in modulating response inhibition

Influential hypotheses propose that alterations in emotional state influence decision processes and executive control of behavior. Both music and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of prefrontal cortex affect emotional state, however interactive effects of music and tDCS on executive functions remain unknown. Learning to inhibit inappropriate responses is an important aspect of executive control which is guided by assessing the decision outcomes such as errors. We found that high-tempo music, but not low-tempo music or low-level noise, significantly influenced learning and implementation of inhibitory control. In addition, a brief period of tDCS over prefrontal cortex specifically interacted with high-tempo music and altered its effects on executive functions. Measuring event-related autonomic and arousal response of participants indicated that exposure to task demands and practice led to a decline in arousal response to the decision outcome and high-tempo music enhanced such practice-related processes. However, tDCS specifically moderated the high-tempo music effect on the arousal response to errors and concomitantly restored learning and improvement in executive functions. Here, we show that tDCS and music interactively influence the learning and implementation of inhibitory control. Our findings indicate that alterations in the arousal-emotional response to the decision outcome might underlie these interactive effects.

Female Listeners' Autonomic Responses to Dramatic Shifts Between Loud and Soft Music/Sound Passages: A Study of Heavy Metal Songs

Although music and the emotion it conveys unfold over time, little is known about how listeners respond to shifts in musical emotions. A special technique in heavy metal music utilizes dramatic shifts between loud and soft passages. Loud passages are penetrated by distorted sounds conveying aggression, whereas soft passages are often characterized by a clean, calm singing voice and light accompaniment. The present study used heavy metal songs and soft sea sounds to examine how female listeners’ respiration rates and heart rates responded to the arousal changes associated with auditory stimuli. The high-frequency power of heart rate variability (HF-HRV) was used to assess cardiac parasympathetic activity. The results showed that the soft passages of heavy metal songs and soft sea sounds expressed lower arousal and induced significantly higher HF-HRVs than the loud passages of heavy metal songs. Listeners’ respiration rate was determined by the arousal level of the present music passage, whereas the heart rate was dependent on both the present and preceding passages. Compared with soft sea sounds, the loud music passage led to greater deceleration of the heart rate at the beginning of the following soft music passage. The sea sounds delayed the heart rate acceleration evoked by the following loud music passage. The data provide evidence that sound-induced parasympathetic activity affects listeners’ heart rate in response to the following music passage. These findings have potential implications for future research on the temporal dynamics of musical emotions.