Modulation of the startle reflex by pleasant and unpleasant music

Stressing out! Effects of acute stress on prepulse inhibition and working memory

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle reflex serves as a pre-cognitive marker of sensorimotor gating, and its deficit may predict cognitive impairments. Startle reflex is modulated by many factors. Among them, stress has been a topic of interest, but its effects on both pre-cognitive and cognitive variables continue to yield divergent results. This study aims to analyze the effect of acute stress on PPI of the startle reflex and cognitive function (working memory, attention, inhibition, and verbal fluency). Participants were exposed to the MAST stress induction protocol or a stress-neutral task: stress group (n = 54) or control group (n = 54). Following stress induction, participants' startle responses were recorded, and cognition was assessed. The results revealed that participants in the stress group exhibited greater startle magnitude, lower PPI, and lower scores in working memory tests compared with the control group. Additionally, a correlation was found between working memory and PPI across all the participants, independent of stress group. These findings support the notion that after stress, both greater startle magnitude and diminished PPI could play an adaptive role by allowing for increased processing of stimuli potentially dangerous and stress-related. Similarly, our results lend support to the hypothesis that lower PPI may be predictive of cognitive impairment. Considering the impact of stress on both pre-cognitive (PPI) and cognitive (working memory) variables, we discuss the possibility that the effect of stress on PPI occurs through motivational priming and emphasize the relevance of considering stress in both basic and translational science.

Does lifestyle modification (physical exercise and listening to music) improve symptoms in patients with a temporomandibular disorder? A randomized clinical trial

Introduction

The aim of the study was to compare pain relief in temporomandibular disorder (TMD) patients with or without lifestyle modification.

Materials and Methods

This randomized clinical trial was performed on patients with TMD, who did not regularly exercise or listen to music. The participants were allocated into two groups. In the treatment group, the participants were instructed to exercise five times or more per week (30 minutes per session) and listen to the music of their choice five times or more per week (15 minutes per session) for 12 weeks. In the control group, the participants had their usual lifestyle without any modifications. The participants were examined for clicking and crepitus in the joint and maximum mouth opening before and after the intervention. The pain severity was also documented based on a visual analog scale.

Results

Thirty five patients were studied in each group. Twelve weeks after the intervention, the mean pain severity was 2.70 ± 0.73 in the treatment group and 4.63 ± 0.77 in the control group. The results of data analysis demonstrated a significant difference between the two groups regarding the mean pain severity at 12 weeks after the intervention (P <.001).

Conclusions

Lifestyle modification through physical exercise and listening to music may reduce pain in TMD patients.

Aesthetic and physiological effects of naturalistic multimodal music listening

Compared to audio only (AO) conditions, audiovisual (AV) information can enhance the aesthetic experience of a music performance. However, such beneficial multimodal effects have yet to be studied in naturalistic music performance settings. Further, peripheral physiological correlates of aesthetic experiences are not well-understood. Here, participants were invited to a concert hall for piano performances of Bach, Messiaen, and Beethoven, which were presented in two conditions: AV and AO. They rated their aesthetic experience (AE) after each piece (Experiment 1 and 2), while peripheral signals (cardiorespiratory measures, skin conductance, and facial muscle activity) were continuously measured (Experiment 2). Factor scores of AE were significantly higher in the AV condition in both experiments. LF/HF ratio, a heart rhythm that represents activation of the sympathetic nervous system, was higher in the AO condition, suggesting increased arousal, likely caused by less predictable sound onsets in the AO condition. We present partial evidence that breathing was faster and facial muscle activity was higher in the AV condition, suggesting that observing a performer's movements likely enhances motor mimicry in these more voluntary peripheral measures. Further, zygomaticus ('smiling') muscle activity was a significant predictor of AE. Thus, we suggest physiological measures are related to AE, but at different levels: the more involuntary measures (i.e., heart rhythms) may reflect more sensory aspects, while the more voluntary measures (i.e., muscular control of breathing and facial responses) may reflect the liking aspect of an AE. In summary, we replicate and extend previous findings that AV information enhances AE in a naturalistic music performance setting. We further show that a combination of self-report and peripheral measures benefit a meaningful assessment of AE in naturalistic music performance settings.

Eye blinking, musical processing, and subjective states-A methods account

Affective sciences often make use of self-reports to assess subjective states. Seeking a more implicit measure for states and emotions, our study explored spontaneous eye blinking during music listening. However, blinking is understudied in the context of research on subjective states. Therefore, a second goal was to explore different ways of analyzing blink activity recorded from infra-red eye trackers, using two additional data sets from earlier studies differing in blinking and viewing instructions. We first replicate the effect of increased blink rates during music listening in comparison with silence and show that the effect is not related to changes in self-reported valence, arousal, or to specific musical features. Interestingly, but in contrast, felt absorption reduced participants' blinking. The instruction to inhibit blinking did not change results. From a methodological perspective, we make suggestions about how to define blinks from data loss periods recorded by eye trackers and report a data-driven outlier rejection procedure and its efficiency for subject-mean analyses, as well as trial-based analyses. We ran a variety of mixed effects models that differed in how trials without blinking were treated. The main results largely converged across accounts. The broad consistency of results across different experiments, outlier treatments, and statistical models demonstrates the reliability of the reported effects. As recordings of data loss periods come for free when interested in eye movements or pupillometry, we encourage researchers to pay attention to blink activity and contribute to the further understanding of the relation between blinking, subjective states, and cognitive processing.

New insights on the correspondence between subjective affective experience and physiological responses from representational similarity analysis

Classical views suggest that experienced affect is related to a specific bodily response, whereas recent perspectives challenge this view postulating that similar affective experiences rather evoke different physiological responses. To further advance this debate in the field, we used representational similarity analysis to investigate the correspondence between subjective affect (arousal and valence ratings) and physiological reactions (skin conductance response [SCR], startle blink response, heart rate, and corrugator activity) across various emotion induction contexts (picture viewing task, sound listening task, and imagery task). Significant similarities were exclusively observed between SCR and arousal in the picture viewing task. However, none of the other physiological measures showed a significant relation with valence and arousal ratings in any of the tasks. These findings are discussed within the framework of the Populations hypothesis, suggesting that physiological responses do not depend on the experienced affect but are directly associated with the context in which they are evoked.

Isn't There Room for Music in Chronic Pain Management?

Chronic pain with its comorbidities, such as depression, insomnia, and social deprivation, is a major cause of disability and health-economic burden. Insufficient response to pain medication and potentially serious adverse effects have led the majority of chronic pain patients to seek relief from non-pharmacological remedies. Along with this trend, pain research has paid increasing interest in critical evaluation of various complementary treatments. Music-based treatments have emerged as an efficacious and safe means to enhance the management of acute and chronic pain. We review the current position of music-based interventions in the treatment of chronic pain and present explanations for the analgesic effects of music through modulation of the primary nociception and discuss the contribution of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system to the affective component of pain perception. We propose ways to translate the novel theoretical understanding into clinical practice in different health care settings, primary health care in particular, and discuss the preconditions of successful implementation. We argue that music interventions provide low-cost, easily applicable complementary pain treatments not requiring heavy utilization of health care resources. Finally, we provide research and quality improvement frameworks and make suggestions to cover the gaps of existing evidence. PERSPECTIVE: This article addresses the current evidence for analgesic effects of music interventions, discusses its neurobiological basis and evaluates potential use of music in treating chronic pain patients in different health care settings. We also propose directions for future research to cover shortages in the currently published data.

Emotion elicitation during music listening: Subjective self-reports, facial expression, and autonomic reactivity

The use of music as emotional stimuli in experimental studies has grown in recent years. However, prior studies have mainly focused on self-reports and central measures, with a few works exploring the time course of psychophysiological correlates. Moreover, most of the previous research has been carried out either from the dimensional or categorical model but not combining both approaches to emotions. This study aimed to investigate subjective and physiological correlates of emotion elicitation through music, following the three-dimensional and the discrete emotion model. A sample of 50 healthy volunteers (25 women) took part in this experiment by listening to 42 film music excerpts (14 pleasant, 14 unpleasant, 14 neutral) presented during 8 s, while peripheral measures were continuously recorded. After music offset, affective dimensions (valence, energy arousal, and tension arousal) as well as discrete emotions (happiness, sadness, tenderness, fear, and anger) were collected using a 9-point scale. Results showed an effect of the music category on subjective and psychophysiological measures. In peripheral physiology, greater electrodermal activity, heart rate acceleration, and zygomatic responses, besides lower corrugator amplitude, were observed for pleasant excerpts in comparison to neutral and unpleasant music, from 2 s after stimulus onset until the end of its duration. Overall, our results add evidence for the efficacy of standardized film music excerpts to evoke powerful emotions in laboratory settings; thus, opening a path to explore interventions based on music in pathologies with underlying emotion deregulatory processes.

Music in Mood Regulation and Coping Orientations in Response to COVID-19 Lockdown Measures Within the United Kingdom

Music is a tool used in daily life in order to mitigate negative and enhance positive emotions. Listeners may orientate their engagement with music around its ability to facilitate particular emotional responses and to subsequently regulate mood. Existing scales have aimed to gauge both individual coping orientations in response to stress, as well as individual use of music for the purposes of mood regulation. This study utilised pre-validated scales through an online survey (N = 233) in order to measure whether music's use in mood regulation is influenced by coping orientations and/or demographic variables in response to the lockdown measures imposed in the United Kingdom, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst factor analyses show that the existing theoretical structure of the COPE model has indicated a poor fit for clustered coping orientations, a subsequent five-factor structure was determined for coping orientations in response to lockdown. Analyses include observations that positive reframing and active coping (Positive Outlook) were strong predictors of music use in mood regulation amongst listener's coping strategies, as was Substance Use. Higher Age indicated having a negative effect on music's use in mood regulation, whilst factors such as gender were not seen to be significant in relation to the use of music in mood regulation within this context. These results provide insight into how individuals have engaged with music orientated coping strategies in response to a unique stressor.

Contactless differentiation of pleasant and unpleasant valence: Assessment of the acoustic startle eyeblink response with infrared reflectance oculography

The ability to distinguish between discrete emotions by monitoring autonomic or facial features has been an elusive "holy grail" for fields such as psychophysiology, affective computing, and human-computer interface design. However, cross-validated models are lacking, and contemporary theory suggests that emotions may lack distinct physiological or facial "signatures." Therefore, in this study, we propose a reorientation toward distinguishing between pleasant and unpleasant affective valence. We focus on the acoustic eyeblink response, which exhibits affective modulation but remains underutilized. The movement of the eyelid was monitored in a contactless manner via infrared reflectance oculography at 1 kHz while 36 participants viewed normatively pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images, and 50-ms bursts of white noise were presented binaurally via headphones. Startle responses while viewing pleasant images exhibited significantly smaller amplitudes than those while viewing unpleasant images, with a large effect size (d = 1.56). The affective modulation of the eyeblink startle response is a robust phenomenon that can be assessed in a contactless manner. As research continues on whether systems based on psychophysiological or facial features can distinguish between discrete emotions, the eyeblink startle response offers a relatively simple way to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant affective valence.

Induced Positive Affect Reduces the Magnitude of the Startle Response and Prepulse Inhibition

Abstract. The startle response is a reflex that represents a form of adaptation to environmental changes potentially relevant to survival. Startle magnitude can change depending on a number of factors such as the affective state of the organism during the presentation of the startle-inducing stimulus, or the so-called Prepulse Inhibition (PPI) that occurs when the startling stimulus (or Pulse) is preceded by a low-intensity stimulus (or Prepulse). This paper describes an experiment designed to analyze the impact of an induced positive affect on the magnitude of the startle response and PPI in adult humans. Specifically, each participant received alternating exposures to a picture of a face of a loved person (positive affect condition) or to a picture of a face of an unknown person (control condition) while the startle response and PPI were recorded. The results showed a decrease in both the magnitude of the startle response and percent PPI on the positive affect trials when compared with the control trials. These results are interpreted from psychophysiological and psychological perspectives considering the role of emotions in adaptive behavior.

"Stopping for knowledge": The sense of beauty in the perception-action cycle

According to a millennial-old philosophical debate, aesthetic emotions have been connected to knowledge acquisition. Recent scientific evidence, collected across different disciplinary domains, confirms this link, but also reveals that motor inhibition plays a crucial role in the process. In this review, we discuss multidisciplinary results and propose an original account of aesthetic appreciation (the stopping for knowledge hypothesis) framed within the predictive coding theory. We discuss evidence showing that aesthetic emotions emerge in correspondence with an inhibition of motor behavior (i.e., minimizing action), promoting a simultaneous perceptual processing enhancement, at the level of sensory cortices (i.e., optimizing learning). Accordingly, we suggest that aesthetic appreciation may represent a hedonic feedback over learning progresses, motivating the individual to inhibit motor routines to seek further knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, the neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies we review reveal the presence of a strong association between aesthetic appreciation and the activation of the dopaminergic reward-related circuits. Finally, we propose a number of possible applications of the stopping for knowledge hypothesis in the clinical and education domains.

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the “perceived” than the “felt” task. This result suggested that the focus on one’s self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the “felt” task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression.

Prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle reflex and P50 gating in aging and alzheimer's disease

Inhibition plays a crucial role in many functional domains, such as cognition, emotion, and actions. Studies on cognitive aging demonstrate changes in inhibitory mechanisms are age- and pathology-related. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is the suppression of an acoustic startle reflex (ASR) to an intense stimulus when a weak prepulse stimulus precedes the startle stimulus. A reduction of PPI is thought to reflect dysfunction of sensorimotor gating which normally suppresses excessive behavioral responses to disruptive stimuli. Both human and rodent studies show age-dependent alterations of PPI of the ASR that are further compromised in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The auditory P50 gating, an index of repetition suppression, also is characterized as a putative electrophysiological biomarker of prodromal AD. This review provides the latest evidence of age- and AD-associated impairment of sensorimotor gating based upon both human and rodent studies, as well as the AD-related disruption of P50 gating in humans. It begins with a concise review of neural networks underlying PPI regulation. Then, evidence of age- and AD-related dysfunction of both PPI and P50 gating is discussed. The attentional/ emotional aspects of sensorimotor gating and the neurotransmitter mechanisms underpinning PPI and P50 gating are also reviewed. The review ends with conclusions and research directions.

Aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals enhances behavioural and neurophysiological indexes of attentional engagement and motor inhibition

From Kant to current perspectives in neuroaesthetics, the experience of beauty has been described as disinterested, i.e. focusing on the stimulus perceptual features while neglecting self-referred concerns. At a neurophysiological level, some indirect evidence suggests that disinterested aesthetic appreciation might be associated with attentional enhancement and inhibition of motor behaviour. To test this hypothesis, we performed three auditory-evoked potential experiments, employing consonant and dissonant two-note musical intervals. Twenty-two volunteers judged the beauty of intervals (Aesthetic Judgement task) or responded to them as fast as possible (Detection task). In a third Go-NoGo task, a different group of twenty-two participants had to refrain from responding when hearing intervals. Individual aesthetic judgements positively correlated with response times in the Detection task, with slower motor responses for more appreciated intervals. Electrophysiological indexes of attentional engagement (N1/P2) and motor inhibition (N2/P3) were enhanced for more appreciated intervals. These findings represent the first experimental evidence confirming the disinterested interest hypothesis and may have important applications in research areas studying the effects of stimulus features on learning and motor behaviour.

(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films

Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film making and entertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals' behavioral, cognitive, and emotional responses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psychology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people's decision to watch horror, why people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, horror film, how exposure to horror film changes behavior, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how liking for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people's responses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference, but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy, and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men, and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli, whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; and (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children's enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature is identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored.

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

In recent years, many studies have shown that perceiving other individuals' direct gaze has robust effects on various attentional and cognitive processes. However, considerably less attention has been devoted to investigating the affective effects triggered by eye contact. This article reviews research concerning the effects of others' gaze direction on observers' affective responses. The review focuses on studies in which affective reactions have been investigated in well-controlled laboratory experiments, and in which contextual factors possibly influencing perceivers' affects have been controlled. Two important themes emerged from this review. First, explicit affective evaluations of seeing another's direct versus averted gaze have resulted in rather inconsistent findings; some studies report more positive subjective feelings to direct compared to averted gaze, whereas others report the opposite pattern. These contradictory findings may be related, for example, to differences between studies in terms of the capability of direct-gaze stimuli to elicit feelings of self-involvement. Second, studies relying on various implicit measures have reported more consistent results; they indicate that direct gaze increases affective arousal, and more importantly, that eye contact automatically evokes a positively valenced affective reaction. Based on the review, possible psychological mechanisms for the positive affective reactions elicited by eye contact are described.

The analgesic effect of music on cold pressor pain responses: The influence of anxiety and attitude toward pain

OBJECTIVE

The analgesic effect of music has been recognized for pain relief, but individual differences and adjuvant methods are poorly understood. This study employed a cold-pressor task (CPT) to observe the effects of music (without considering personal preferences) on pain experience and how this is affected by individuals' general (and pain-specific) anxiety symptomology.

METHODS

Fifty participants were each presented with three conditions (randomized into different orders): music-listening, news-listening, and no sound (control). Pain responses, including pain tolerance time (PT), pain intensity (PI), and pain unpleasantness (PU), were assessed using CPT and compared with a 3x3 crossover design. Participants also completed the anxiety sensitivity index (ASI-16) and pain anxiety symptom scale (PASS-20).

RESULTS

CPT pain responses during the music intervention were significantly different from responses during the news intervention and control conditions, respectively. Among participants with normal anxiety levels, pain responses during the music condition differed significantly from the news and control groups; this was not the case for the anxiety risk group. Pain responses during the music condition for those with normal levels of pain-specific anxiety differed significantly from the control, but this was not the case for the risk group.

CONCLUSIONS

Music appears to influence diminished pain responses relative to the absence of an intervention. However, this was not the case when individuals listened to news stories. These effects were more robust for individuals experiencing normal levels of general and pain-specific anxiety. Thus, music (even outside one's own preferences) was an effective adjuvant method for managing pain, especially among those without significant anxiety symptomology.

Slow motion in films and video clips: Music influences perceived duration and emotion, autonomic physiological activation and pupillary responses

Slow motion scenes are ubiquitous in screen-based audiovisual media and are typically accompanied by emotional music. The strong effects of slow motion on observers are hypothetically related to heightened emotional states in which time seems to pass more slowly. These states are simulated in films and video clips, and seem to resemble such experiences in daily life. The current study investigated time perception and emotional response to media clips containing decelerated human motion, with or without music using psychometric and psychophysiological testing methods. Participants were presented with slow-motion scenes taken from commercial films, ballet and sports footage, as well as the same scenes converted to real-time. Results reveal that slow-motion scenes, compared to adapted real-time scenes, led to systematic underestimations of duration, lower perceived arousal but higher valence, lower respiration rates and smaller pupillary diameters. The presence of music compared to visual-only presentations strongly affected results in terms of higher accuracy in duration estimates, higher perceived arousal and valence, higher physiological activation and larger pupillary diameters, indicating higher arousal. Video genre affected responses in addition. These findings suggest that perceiving slow motion is not related to states of high arousal, but rather affects cognitive dimensions of perceived time and valence. Music influences these experiences profoundly, thus strengthening the impact of stretched time in audiovisual media.

Identification of the Features of Emotional Dysfunction in Female Individuals With Methamphetamine Use Disorder Measured by Musical Stimuli Modulated Startle Reflex

Emotional dysregulation contributes to the development of substance use disorders (SUDs) and is highly associated with drug abuse and relapse. Music as a contextual auditory stimulus can effectively stimulate the reward circuitry, modulate memory associated with drug taking, and enhance emotional experiences during drug taking. However, the studies of the emotional responses to music in individuals with SUDs are scarce. Using startle reflex and self-reports, this study assessed the psychophysiological and cognitive emotional responses (i.e., valence, arousal and proximity) to happy, peaceful, and fearful music stimuli in 30 females with methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) and 30 healthy females. The results found that participants with MUD showed an inhibited startle response to fearful music compared to normal controls (t = 3.7, p < 0.01), and no significant differences were found in the startle responses to happy and peaceful music between the two groups. For the self-reported ratings, participants with MUD showed a decreased arousal in the response to fearful (t = 4.1, p < 0.01) and happy music (t = 3.8, p < 0.01), an increased valence in the response to fearful music (t = 4.4, p < 0.01), and a higher level of proximity in the response to fearful (t = 3.8, p < 0.01) and happy music (t = 2.2, p = 0.03). No significant differences were found in the rating of arousal to peaceful music, the valence to happy and peaceful music, as well as the proximity to peaceful music between the two groups. The females with MUD showed attenuated psychophysiological response and potentiated cognitive response (i.e., valence, arousal) to fearful music, as well as a high proximity to musical stimuli with high arousal regardless of its valence. These results have important implications for promoting the effectiveness of assessment and therapy selections for female MUD patients with impaired emotion regulation.

Crickets alter wind-elicited escape strategies depending on acoustic context

Acoustic signals trigger various behaviours in insects such as courtship or escape from predators. However, it remains unknown whether insects utilize acoustic signals to recognize environmental contexts. The cricket is a prominent model insect for neuroethological studies on acoustic behaviour because female crickets exhibit positive phonotaxis in response to male calling songs, and flying crickets display avoidance behaviour for high-frequency sounds such as echolocation call of bats. The carrier frequency of these sounds is a major factor in determining whether they initiate these acoustic behaviours. Here, we examined the impacts of different frequencies of tone sounds on cercal-mediated escape behaviour, using a 5-kHz tone corresponding to the calling song and a 15-kHz tone serving as a trigger of avoidance behaviours. Neither frequency elicited a response in the standing cricket by itself, but they had different impacts on walking responses to airflow stimuli. While the 15-kHz tone reduced response probability, extended moving distance, and enhanced turn-angle variability, the 5-kHz tone had no effect. Although both frequencies of tones facilitated walking backward, the 15-kHz tone had a larger effect than the 5-kHz tone. These frequency dependencies of behavioural modulation suggest that crickets can recognize acoustic contexts and alter their escape strategy accordingly.

Enhanced startle reflexivity during presentation of visual nurture cues in young adults who experienced parental divorce in early childhood

Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) may influence stress and affective processing in adulthood. Animal and human studies show enhanced startle reflexivity in adult participants with ACE. This study examined the impact of one of the most common ACE, parental divorce, on startle reflexivity in adulthood. Affective modulation of acoustically-elicited startle eye blink was assessed in a group of 23 young adults with self-reported history of parental divorce, compared to an age- and sex-matched control group (n=18). Foreground pictures were either aversive (e.g. mutilation and injury), standard appetitive (e.g. erotic, recreational sport), or nurture pictures (e.g. related to early life, parental care), intermixed with neutral pictures (e.g. household objects), and organized in three valence blocks delivered in a balanced, pseudo-randomized sequence. During picture viewing startle eye blinks were elicited by binaural white noise bursts (50ms, 105 dB) via headphones and recorded at the left orbicularis oculi muscle via EMG. A significant interaction of group×picture valence (p=0.01) was observed. Contrast with controls revealed blunted startle responsiveness of the ACE group during presentation of aversive pictures, but enhanced startle during presentation of nurture-related pictures. No group differences were found during presentation of standard appetitive pictures. ACE participants rated nurture pictures as more arousing (p=0.02) than did control participants. Results suggest that divorce in childhood led to altered affective context information processing in early adulthood. When exposed to unpleasant (vs. neutral) pictures participants with ACE showed less startle potentiation than controls. Nurture context, however, potentiated startle in ACE participants, suggesting visual cuing to activate protective behavioral responses.

Modulation of Prepulse Inhibition and Startle Reflex by Emotions: A Comparison between Young and Older Adults

This study examined whether or not the acoustic startle response and sensorimotor gating may be modulated by emotions differentially between young and older adults. Two groups of participants (mean age Young: 24 years old; Elderly: 63.6 years old) were presented with three types of auditory stimuli (Startle alone, High or Low frequency Prepulse) while viewing pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant images. Electromyographic activity of the eyeblink response was measured. Results show that older adults displayed diminished eyeblink responses whereas younger adults displayed enhanced eyeblink responses when viewing negative images. Sensorimotor gating also differed between young and older adults, with enhanced sensorimotor gating abilities while viewing positive pictures in older adults and diminished abilities while viewing negative pictures among younger adults. These results argue in favor of a differential emotional influence on the sensorimotor abilities of young and older adults, with a positivity bias among the latter.

The Eye is Listening: Music-Induced Arousal and Individual Differences Predict Pupillary Responses

Pupillary responses are a well-known indicator of emotional arousal but have not yet been systematically investigated in response to music. Here, we measured pupillary dilations evoked by short musical excerpts normalized for intensity and selected for their stylistic uniformity. Thirty participants (15 females) provided subjective ratings of music-induced felt arousal, tension, pleasantness, and familiarity for 80 classical music excerpts. The pupillary responses evoked by these excerpts were measured in another thirty participants (15 females). We probed the role of listener-specific characteristics such as mood, stress reactivity, self-reported role of music in life, liking for the selected excerpts, as well as of subjective responses to music, in pupillary responses. Linear mixed model analyses showed that a greater role of music in life was associated with larger dilations, and that larger dilations were also predicted for excerpts rated as more arousing or tense. However, an interaction between arousal and liking for the excerpts suggested that pupillary responses were modulated less strongly by arousal when the excerpts were particularly liked. An analogous interaction was observed between tension and liking. Additionally, males exhibited larger dilations than females. Overall, these findings suggest a complex interplay between bottom-up and top-down influences on pupillary responses to music.

Music and the heart

Music can powerfully evoke and modulate emotions and moods, along with changes in heart activity, blood pressure (BP), and breathing. Although there is great heterogeneity in methods and quality among previous studies on effects of music on the heart, the following findings emerge from the literature: Heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate (RR) are higher in response to exciting music compared with tranquilizing music. During musical frissons (involving shivers and piloerection), both HR and RR increase. Moreover, HR and RR tend to increase in response to music compared with silence, and HR appears to decrease in response to unpleasant music compared with pleasant music. We found no studies that would provide evidence for entrainment of HR to musical beats. Corresponding to the increase in HR, listening to exciting music (compared with tranquilizing music) is associated with a reduction of heart rate variability (HRV), including reductions of both low-frequency and high-frequency power of the HRV. Recent findings also suggest effects of music-evoked emotions on regional activity of the heart, as reflected in electrocardiogram amplitude patterns. In patients with heart disease (similar to other patient groups), music can reduce pain and anxiety, associated with lower HR and lower BP. In general, effects of music on the heart are small, and there is great inhomogeneity among studies with regard to methods, findings, and quality. Therefore, there is urgent need for systematic high-quality research on the effects of music on the heart, and on the beneficial effects of music in clinical settings.

Determining the effects of films with suicidal content: a laboratory experiment

BACKGROUND

Media stories on suicide can increase suicidal ideation, but little is known about variations in media effects with regard to audience vulnerability and story contents.

AIMS

We investigated the impact of three drama films with suicidal content that varied with regard to the final outcome (suicide completion, mastery of crisis and death by natural causes) and tested the moderating effect of baseline suicidality of the participants on the effects.

METHOD

Within a laboratory setting, we randomly assigned 95 adults to three film groups. We used questionnaires to analyse the effects of the films on mood, depression, life satisfaction, self-worth, assumed benevolence of the world and suicidality, as well as identification with the protagonist. We stratified the sample into participants with suicidal tendencies above and below the sample median.

RESULTS

The film that ended with the protagonist's suicide led to a deterioration of mood particularly in individuals with baseline suicidality below the median, who also experienced an increase in self-worth. Participants with stronger suicidal tendencies experienced a rise in suicidality that depended on their level of identification with the protagonist. The film featuring the main character positively coping with his crisis increased life satisfaction particularly among participants with higher suicidal tendencies.

CONCLUSIONS

The effects of suicide-related media material seem to vary with individual vulnerability and with type of media portrayal. Individuals with lower vulnerability experience more emotional reactions when exposed to a film culminating in suicide, but individuals with higher vulnerability experience a rise in suicidal tendencies particularly if they identify with the protagonist who died by suicide. In contrast, portrayals of individual mastery of crisis may have beneficial effects in more vulnerable individuals.

Modality of fear cues affects acoustic startle potentiation but not heart-rate response in patients with dental phobia

The acoustic startle response (SR) has consistently been shown to be enhanced by fear-arousing cross-modal background stimuli in phobics. Intra-modal fear-potentiation of acoustic SR was rarely investigated and generated inconsistent results. The present study compared the acoustic SR to phobia-related sounds with that to phobia-related pictures in 104 dental phobic patients and 22 controls. Acoustic background stimuli were dental treatment noises and birdsong and visual stimuli were dental treatment and neutral control pictures. Background stimuli were presented for 4 s, randomly followed by the administration of the startle stimulus. In addition to SR, heart-rate (HR) was recorded throughout the trials. Irrespective of their content, background pictures elicited greater SR than noises in both groups with a trend for phobic participants to show startle potentiation to phobia-related pictures but not noises. Unlike controls, phobics showed HR acceleration to both dental pictures and noises. HR acceleration of the phobia group was significantly positively correlated with SR in the noise condition only. The acoustic SR to phobia-related noises is likely to be inhibited by prolonged sensorimotor gating.

Beyond Intensity: Spectral Features Effectively Predict Music-Induced Subjective Arousal

Emotions in music are conveyed by a variety of acoustic cues. Notably, the positive association between sound intensity and arousal has particular biological relevance. However, although amplitude normalization is a common procedure used to control for intensity in music psychology research, direct comparisons between emotional ratings of original and amplitude-normalized musical excerpts are lacking.

In this study, 30 nonmusicians retrospectively rated the subjective arousal and pleasantness induced by 84 six-second classical music excerpts, and an additional 30 nonmusicians rated the same excerpts normalized for amplitude. Following the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models of acoustic communication, we hypothesized that arousal and pleasantness ratings would be similar for both versions of the excerpts, and that arousal could be predicted effectively by other acoustic cues besides intensity.

Although the difference in mean arousal and pleasantness ratings between original and amplitude-normalized excerpts correlated significantly with the amplitude adjustment, ratings for both sets of excerpts were highly correlated and shared a similar range of values, thus validating the use of amplitude normalization in music emotion research. Two acoustic parameters, spectral flux and spectral entropy, accounted for 65% of the variance in arousal ratings for both sets, indicating that spectral features can effectively predict arousal. Additionally, we confirmed that amplitude-normalized excerpts were adequately matched for loudness. Overall, the results corroborate our hypotheses and support the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models.

Is there a negative interpretation bias in depressed patients? An affective startle modulation study

BACKGROUND/AIMS

Scientists proposed that patients with depression favour negative interpretations when appraising ambiguity. As self-report measures seem prone to response bias, implicit measures of emotional valence should be additionally used.

METHODS

A total of 16 patients with depression and 19 controls underwent an acoustic imagery task comprising neutral and negative words, as well as ambiguous words that could be understood either way. Affective startle modulation and direct interrogation were used to assess implicit and explicit emotional valence, respectively. We expected a negative bias for ambiguous words in the patient group, resulting in augmented startle magnitudes and preference for negative interpretations of the ambiguous words in the interrogation.

RESULTS

Surprisingly, both groups preferred neutral interpretations and showed augmented startle magnitudes to ambiguous words. Furthermore, both groups displayed an emotional startle potentiation for negative words.

CONCLUSION

In summary, our results do not confirm a negative interpretation bias or a blunted emotional response in patients with major depression. The mismatch between self-report and affective startle reaction to ambiguous targets might reflect defensive mobilization or attention effects.

Music reduces pain and increases functional mobility in fibromyalgia

The pain in Fibromyalgia (FM) is difficult to treat and functional mobility seems to be an important comorbidity in these patients that could evolve into a disability. In this study we wanted to investigate the analgesic effects of music in FM pain. Twenty-two FM patients were passively exposed to (1) self-chosen, relaxing, pleasant music, and to (2) a control auditory condition (pink noise). They rated pain and performed the “timed-up & go task (TUG)” to measure functional mobility after each auditory condition. Listening to relaxing, pleasant, self-chosen music reduced pain and increased functional mobility significantly in our FM patients. The music-induced analgesia was significantly correlated with the TUG scores; thereby suggesting that the reduction in pain unpleasantness increased functional mobility. Notably, this mobility improvement was obtained with music played prior to the motor task (not during), therefore the effect cannot be explained merely by motor entrainment to a fast rhythm. Cognitive and emotional mechanisms seem to be central to music-induced analgesia. Our findings encourage the use of music as a treatment adjuvant to reduce chronic pain in FM and increase functional mobility thereby reducing the risk of disability.

Emotion felt by the listener and expressed by the music: literature review and theoretical perspectives

In his seminal paper, Gabrielsson (2002) distinguishes between emotion felt by the listener, here: "internal locus of emotion" (IL), and the emotion the music is expressing, here: "external locus of emotion" (EL). This paper tabulates 16 comparisons of felt versus expressed emotions in music published in the decade 2003-2012 consisting of 19 studies/experiments and provides some theoretical perspectives. The key findings were that (1) IL rating was frequently rated statistically the same or lower than the corresponding EL rating (e.g., lower felt happiness rating compared to the apparent happiness of the music), and that (2) self-select and preferred music had a smaller gap across the emotion loci than experimenter-selected and disliked music. These key findings were explained by an "inhibited" emotional contagion mechanism, where the otherwise matching felt emotion may have been attenuated by some other factor such as social context. Matching between EL and IL for loved and self-selected pieces was explained by the activation of "contagion" circuits. Physiological arousal, personality and age, as well as musical features (tempo, mode, putative emotions) also influenced perceived and felt emotion distinctions. A variety of data collection formats were identified, but mostly using rating items. In conclusion, a more systematic use of terminology appears desirable. Two broad categories, namely matched and unmatched, are proposed as being sufficient to capture the relationships between EL and IL, instead of four categories as suggested by Gabrielsson.

The "Musical Emotional Bursts": a validated set of musical affect bursts to investigate auditory affective processing

The Musical Emotional Bursts (MEB) consist of 80 brief musical executions expressing basic emotional states (happiness, sadness and fear) and neutrality. These musical bursts were designed to be the musical analog of the Montreal Affective Voices (MAV)—a set of brief non-verbal affective vocalizations portraying different basic emotions. The MEB consist of short (mean duration: 1.6 s) improvisations on a given emotion or of imitations of a given MAV stimulus, played on a violin (10 stimuli × 4 [3 emotions + neutral]), or a clarinet (10 stimuli × 4 [3 emotions + neutral]). The MEB arguably represent a primitive form of music emotional expression, just like the MAV represent a primitive form of vocal, non-linguistic emotional expression. To create the MEB, stimuli were recorded from 10 violinists and 10 clarinetists, and then evaluated by 60 participants. Participants evaluated 240 stimuli [30 stimuli × 4 (3 emotions + neutral) × 2 instruments] by performing either a forced-choice emotion categorization task, a valence rating task or an arousal rating task (20 subjects per task); 40 MAVs were also used in the same session with similar task instructions. Recognition accuracy of emotional categories expressed by the MEB (n:80) was lower than for the MAVs but still very high with an average percent correct recognition score of 80.4%. Highest recognition accuracies were obtained for happy clarinet (92.0%) and fearful or sad violin (88.0% each) MEB stimuli. The MEB can be used to compare the cerebral processing of emotional expressions in music and vocal communication, or used for testing affective perception in patients with communication problems.

Toward a neural chronometry for the aesthetic experience of music

Music is often studied as a cognitive domain alongside language. The emotional aspects of music have also been shown to be important, but views on their nature diverge. For instance, the specific emotions that music induces and how they relate to emotional expression are still under debate. Here we propose a mental and neural chronometry of the aesthetic experience of music initiated and mediated by external and internal contexts such as intentionality, background mood, attention, and expertise. The initial stages necessary for an aesthetic experience of music are feature analysis, integration across modalities, and cognitive processing on the basis of long-term knowledge. These stages are common to individuals belonging to the same musical culture. The initial emotional reactions to music include the startle reflex, core "liking," and arousal. Subsequently, discrete emotions are perceived and induced. Presumably somatomotor processes synchronizing the body with the music also come into play here. The subsequent stages, in which cognitive, affective, and decisional processes intermingle, require controlled cross-modal neural processes to result in aesthetic emotions, aesthetic judgments, and conscious liking. These latter aesthetic stages often require attention, intentionality, and expertise for their full actualization.

Increased anxiety induced by listening to unpleasant music during stress exposure is associated with reduced blood pressure and ACTH responses in healthy men

The relationship between anxiety and the neuroendocrine response to stress stimuli is still not fully understood. The aim of this study was to evaluate the contribution of an acute increase in state anxiety to neuroendocrine activation under stress conditions. To do so, it was necessary to find a stress condition of the same character and intensity with and without a rise in state anxiety. We decided to examine the effects of listening to music on anxiety and to apply a new methodological approach. A group of 14 healthy volunteers participated in a counterbalanced crossover design study. The stress procedure consisted of mental (Stroop test, mental arithmetic) and physical (handgrip exercise) tasks combined with listening to music played forward (pleasant) or backwards (unpleasant). The results confirmed our hypothesis, namely the condition with listening to unpleasant music was anxiogenic, while the other was not. In case of increased state anxiety, the rise in ACTH concentrations in response to mental challenge and the increase in systolic blood pressure induced by handgrip exercise was reduced compared to the situation with unchanged anxiety. Concentrations of testosterone, oxytocin, vasopressin and aldosterone were slightly increased in response to the stress paradigm accompanied with increased anxiety. In conclusion, the present data demonstrate that an acute increase in state anxiety contributes to neuroendocrine activation under stress conditions. Moreover, the results show that listening to music may both positively and negatively influence the perception of stress and the level of anxiety, which might have functional consequences.

Effects of cold pressor stress on the human startle response

Both emotion and attention are known to influence the startle response. Stress influences emotion and attention, but the impact of stress on the human startle response remains unclear. We used an established physiological stressor, the Cold Pressor Test (CPT), to induce stress in a non-clinical human sample (24 student participants) in a within-subjects design. Autonomic (heart rate and skin conductance) and somatic (eye blink) responses to acoustic startle probes were measured during a pre-stress baseline, during a three minutes stress intervention, and during the subsequent recovery period. Startle skin conductance and heart rate responses were facilitated during stress. Compared to baseline, startle eye blink responses were not affected during the intervention but were diminished afterwards. These data describe a new and unique startle response pattern during stress: facilitation of autonomic stress responses but no such facilitation of somatic startle eye blink responses. The absence of an effect of stress on startle eye blink responsiveness may illustrate the importance of guaranteeing uninterrupted visual input during periods of stress.

Personality correlates of reporting Chinese words from the Deutsch "high-low" word illusion by Chinese-speaking people

OBJECTIVE

When English-speaking people listen to the Deutsch "high-low" word illusion, they report hearing English words. Whether Chinese-speaking people report Chinese words when listening to the illusion, or whether any reported words might be correlated with personality traits as previous investigations have demonstrated for listening to music in other cultures, is open to question. The present study aimed to address this.

METHODS

A total of 308 right-handed, healthy volunteers (177 women and 131 men) were given the illusion test and asked to answer the Zuckerman-Kuhlman personality questionnaire (ZKPQ). Their depressive tendency was measured by the Plutchik-van Praag depression inventory (PVP).

RESULTS

There was no gender effect regarding either the PVP score or the number of reported Chinese words from the illusion. Women scored higher on ZKPQ neuroticism-anxiety than men. The number of meaningful Chinese words reported was correlated with the ZKPQ impulsive sensation-seeking, aggression-hostility, and activity scores. Some words reported by participants who scored higher on these three traits were related in meaning to those scales.

CONCLUSION

Our preliminary results suggest that when Chinese-speaking people listen to the Deutsch "high-low" word illusion, they might use personality-related, specific cognitive schemata.

Superior analgesic effect of an active distraction versus pleasant unfamiliar sounds and music: the influence of emotion and cognitive style

Listening to music has been found to reduce acute and chronic pain. The underlying mechanisms are poorly understood; however, emotion and cognitive mechanisms have been suggested to influence the analgesic effect of music. In this study we investigated the influence of familiarity, emotional and cognitive features, and cognitive style on music-induced analgesia. Forty-eight healthy participants were divided into three groups (empathizers, systemizers and balanced) and received acute pain induced by heat while listening to different sounds. Participants listened to unfamiliar Mozart music rated with high valence and low arousal, unfamiliar environmental sounds with similar valence and arousal as the music, an active distraction task (mental arithmetic) and a control, and rated the pain. Data showed that the active distraction led to significantly less pain than did the music or sounds. Both unfamiliar music and sounds reduced pain significantly when compared to the control condition; however, music was no more effective than sound to reduce pain. Furthermore, we found correlations between pain and emotion ratings. Finally, systemizers reported less pain during the mental arithmetic compared with the other two groups. These findings suggest that familiarity may be key in the influence of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of music-induced analgesia, and that cognitive styles may influence pain perception.

The effects of sedative music, arousal music, and silence on electrocardiography signals

INTRODUCTION

Research indicates that music can affect heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance. Music can stimulate central emotions in the brain and release biochemical materials that change the physiologic state. We sought to compare changes in the electrical function of the heart in response to music.

METHOD

Subjects were asked to listen to 2 types of music, namely, sedative and arousal music, in conjunction with two 30-second periods of complete silence. The experiment was conducted in 4 segments: the first and third parts were silence, and the second and fourth parts were music. First, the response to each type of music was compared with that to the preceding period of silence. Next, the responses to both types of music were compared. Finally, the response to music regardless of the type was compared with that to silence.

RESULTS

The amplitude of polarization and depolarization changed in response to different kinds of music. The electrical function of the heart in response to music, irrespective of the music type, differed from that in response to silence. The 2 types of music impacted the electrical function of the heart in different ways: the arousal music influenced T-wave maximum amplitude, whereas no such change was recorded in response to the sedative music.

CONCLUSIONS

The bandwidth of the polarization and depolarization of the heart rate and R-wave amplitude increased in response to music by comparison with silence. In addition, the heart did not seem to try to synchronize with music. The mean R-wave amplitude in sedative music is higher than the arousal music, so our heart works differently when different types of music are heard.

The rewarding aspects of music listening are related to degree of emotional arousal

Background

Listening to music is amongst the most rewarding experiences for humans. Music has no functional resemblance to other rewarding stimuli, and has no demonstrated biological value, yet individuals continue listening to music for pleasure. It has been suggested that the pleasurable aspects of music listening are related to a change in emotional arousal, although this link has not been directly investigated. In this study, using methods of high temporal sensitivity we investigated whether there is a systematic relationship between dynamic increases in pleasure states and physiological indicators of emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity, body temperature, and blood volume pulse.

Methodology

Twenty-six participants listened to self-selected intensely pleasurable music and “neutral” music that was individually selected for them based on low pleasure ratings they provided on other participants' music. The “chills” phenomenon was used to index intensely pleasurable responses to music. During music listening, continuous real-time recordings of subjective pleasure states and simultaneous recordings of sympathetic nervous system activity, an objective measure of emotional arousal, were obtained.

Principal Findings

Results revealed a strong positive correlation between ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal. Importantly, a dissociation was revealed as individuals who did not experience pleasure also showed no significant increases in emotional arousal.

Conclusions/Significance

These results have broader implications by demonstrating that strongly felt emotions could be rewarding in themselves in the absence of a physically tangible reward or a specific functional goal.