Independent component processes underlying emotions during natural music listening

Anticipatory and consummatory neural correlates of monetary and music rewarding stimuli

Most of the literature on the neural bases of human reward and punishment processing has used monetary gains and losses, but less is known about the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the anticipation and consumption of other types of rewarding stimuli. In the present study, EEG was recorded from 19 participants who completed a modified version of the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task. During the task, cues providing information about potential future outcomes were presented to the participants. Then, they had to respond rapidly to a target stimulus to win money or listening to pleasant music, or to avoid losing money or listening to unpleasant music. Results revealed similar responses for monetary and music cues, with increased activity for cues indicating potential gains compared to losses. However, differences emerged in the outcome phase between money and music. Monetary outcomes showed an interaction between the type of the cue and the outcome in the Feedback Related Negativity and Fb-P3 ERPs and increased theta activity increased for negative feedbacks. In contrast, music outcomes showed significant interactions in the Fb-P3 and theta activities. These findings suggest similar neurophysiological mechanisms in processing cues for potential positive or negative outcomes in these two types of stimuli.

Effects of different speed-accuracy instructions on perception in psychology experiments: evidence from event-related potential and oscillation

Introduction

In cognitive behavioral experiments, we often asked participants to make judgments within a deadline. However, the most common instruction of "do the task quickly and accurately" does not highlight the importance of the balance between being fast and accurate.

Methods

Our research aimed to explore how instructions about speed or accuracy affect perceptual process, focus on event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related oscillations (EROs) of two brain responses for visual stimuli, known as P1 and N1. Additionally, we compared the conventional analysis approach with principal component analysis (PCA) based methods to analyze P1 and N1 ERP amplitude and ERO power.

Results

The results showed that individuals instructed to respond quickly had lower P1 amplitude and alpha ERO than those who prioritized accuracy, using the PCA-based approach. However, these two groups had no differences between groups in the N1 theta band using both methods. The traditional time-frequency analysis method could not detect any ERP or ERO distinctions between groups due to limitations in detecting specific components in time or frequency domains. That means PCA is effective in separating these components.

Discussion

Our findings indicate that the instructions given regarding speed and accuracy impact perceptual process of subjects during cognitive behavioral experiments. We suggest that future researchers should choose their instructions carefully, considering the purpose of study.

Short-Term Effect of Auditory Stimulation on Neural Activities: A Scoping Review of Longitudinal Electroencephalography and Magnetoencephalography Studies

Explored through EEG/MEG, auditory stimuli function as a suitable research probe to reveal various neural activities, including event-related potentials, brain oscillations and functional connectivity. Accumulating evidence in this field stems from studies investigating neuroplasticity induced by long-term auditory training, specifically cross-sectional studies comparing musicians and non-musicians as well as longitudinal studies with musicians. In contrast, studies that address the neural effects of short-term interventions whose duration lasts from minutes to hours are only beginning to be featured. Over the past decade, an increasing body of evidence has shown that short-term auditory interventions evoke rapid changes in neural activities, and oscillatory fluctuations can be observed even in the prestimulus period. In this scoping review, we divided the extracted neurophysiological studies into three groups to discuss neural activities with short-term auditory interventions: the pre-stimulus period, during stimulation, and a comparison of before and after stimulation. We show that oscillatory activities vary depending on the context of the stimuli and are greatly affected by the interplay of bottom-up and top-down modulational mechanisms, including attention. We conclude that the observed rapid changes in neural activitiesin the auditory cortex and the higher-order cognitive part of the brain are causally attributed to short-term auditory interventions.

Exploring Spatio-Spectral Electroencephalogram Modulations of Imbuing Emotional Intent During Active Piano Playing

Imbuing emotional intent serves as a crucial modulator of music improvisation during active musical instrument playing. However, most improvisation-related neural endeavors have been gained without considering the emotional context. This study attempts to exploit reproducible spatio-spectral electroencephalogram (EEG) oscillations of emotional intent using a data-driven independent component analysis framework in an ecological multiday piano playing experiment. Through the four-day 32-ch EEG dataset of 10 professional players, we showed that EEG patterns were substantially affected by both intra- and inter-individual variability underlying the emotional intent of the dichotomized valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) categories. Less than half (3-4) of the 10 participants analogously exhibited day-reproducible ( ≥ three days) spectral modulations at the right frontal beta in response to the valence contrast as well as the frontal central gamma and the superior parietal alpha to the arousal counterpart. In particular, the frontal engagement facilitates a better understanding of the frontal cortex (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex) and its role in intervening emotional processes and expressing spectral signatures that are relatively resistant to natural EEG variability. Such ecologically vivid EEG findings may lead to better understanding of the development of a brain-computer music interface infrastructure capable of guiding the training, performance, and appreciation for emotional improvisatory status or actuating music interaction via emotional context.

Music-emotion EEG coupling effects based on representational similarity

BACKGROUND

Music can evoke intense emotions and music emotion is a complex cognitive process. However, we know little about the cognitive mechanisms underlying these processes, and there are significant individual differences in the emotional responses to the same musical stimuli.

NEW METHOD

We used the inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA) method to investigate the shared music emotion responses across multiple participants. In addition, we extended IS-RSA to estimate the group cross-frequency coupling effects of music emotion. Based on the cross-frequency coupling IS-RSA, we analyzed the differences in cross-frequency coupling patterns under different music emotions using MI. Comparison of existing methods: most current IS-RSA analyses focus on within-frequency band analysis. However, the cognitive processing of music emotion involves not only activation and brain network connections differences within frequency bands but also information communication between frequency bands.

RESULTS

The results of the within-frequency band IS-RSA analysis showed that the theta and gamma frequency bands play important roles in the inter-participant consistency of music emotion. The inter-frequency band IS-RSA analysis showed that the theta-beta coupling pattern exhibited stronger inter-participant consistency compared to the theta-gamma coupling pattern, and the theta-beta coupling had significant consistent representation across various music conditions. Through the significant regions of cross-frequency coupling representation similarity analysis, we performed phase-amplitude coupling analysis on FC4-C6 and FC4-Pz connections. For the theta-beta coupling pattern, we found that the MI of these two connections exhibited different coupling patterns under different music conditions, and they showed a significant decrease compared to the baseline period.

Relationships between feeding behaviors and emotions: an electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency analysis study

Feeding behaviors may be easily affected by emotions, both being based on brain activity; however, the relationships between them have not been explicitly defined. In this study, we investigated how emotional environments modulate subjective feelings, brain activity, and feeding behaviors. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were obtained from healthy participants in conditions of virtual comfortable space (CS) and uncomfortable space (UCS) while eating chocolate, and the times required for eating it were measured. We found that the more participants tended to feel comfortable under the CS, the more it took time to eat in the UCS. However, the EEG emergence patterns in the two virtual spaces varied across the individuals. Upon focusing on the theta and low-beta bands, the strength of the mental condition and eating times were found to be guided by these frequency bands. The results determined that the theta and low-beta bands are likely important and relevant waves for feeding behaviors under emotional circumstances, following alterations in mental conditions.

Extracting a Novel Emotional EEG Topographic Map Based on a Stacked Autoencoder Network

Emotion recognition based on brain signals has increasingly become attractive to evaluate human's internal emotional states. Conventional emotion recognition studies focus on developing machine learning and classifiers. However, most of these methods do not provide information on the involvement of different areas of the brain in emotions. Brain mapping is considered as one of the most distinguishing methods of showing the involvement of different areas of the brain in performing an activity. Most mapping techniques rely on projection and visualization of only one of the electroencephalogram (EEG) subband features onto brain regions. The present study aims to develop a new EEG-based brain mapping, which combines several features to provide more complete and useful information on a single map instead of common maps. In this study, the optimal combination of EEG features for each channel was extracted using a stacked autoencoder (SAE) network and visualizing a topographic map. Based on the research hypothesis, autoencoders can extract optimal features for quantitative EEG (QEEG) brain mapping. The DEAP EEG database was employed to extract topographic maps. The accuracy of image classifiers using the convolutional neural network (CNN) was used as a criterion for evaluating the distinction of the obtained maps from a stacked autoencoder topographic map (SAETM) method for different emotions. The average classification accuracy was obtained 0.8173 and 0.8037 in the valence and arousal dimensions, respectively. The extracted maps were also ranked by a team of experts compared to common maps. The results of quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that the obtained map by SAETM has more information than conventional maps.

Functional NIRS to detect covert consciousness in neurocritical patients

OBJECTIVE

This pilot study assesses the feasibility to detect covert consciousness in clinically unresponsive patients by means of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a real intensive care unit setting. We aimed to verify if the hemodynamic response to familiar music measured with fNIRS varies according to the level consciousness of the patients.

METHODS

22 neurocritical patients and 6 healthy controls were included. The experiment consisted in 3 subsequent blocks including a first resting state recording, a period of music playback and a second resting state recording. fNIRS measurement were performed on each subject with two optodes on the forehead. Main oscillatory frequencies of oxyhemoglobin signal were analyzed. Spectral changes of low frequency oscillations (LFO) between subsequent experimental blocks were used as a marker of cortical response. Cortical response was compared to the level of consciousness of the patients and their functional outcome, through validated clinical scores.

RESULTS

Cortical hemodynamic response to music on the left prefrontal brain was associated with the level of consciousness of the patients and with their clinical outcome after three months.

CONCLUSIONS

Variations in LFO spectral power measured with fNIRS may be a new marker of cortical responsiveness to detect covert consciousness in neurocritical patients. Left prefrontal cortex may play an important role in the perception of familiar music.

SIGNIFICANCE

We showed the feasibility of a simple fNIRS approach to detect cortical response in the real setting of an intensive care unit.

Neuroaesthetic exploration on the cognitive processing behind repeating graphics

Repeating graphics are common research objects in modern design education. However, we do not exactly know the attentional processes underlying graphic artifacts consisting of repeating rhythms. In this experiment, the event-related potential, a neuroscientific measure, was used to study the neural correlates of repeating graphics within graded orderliness. We simulated the competitive identification process of people recognizing artifacts with graded repeating rhythms from a scattered natural environment with the oddball paradigm. In the earlier attentional processing related to the P2 component around the Fz electrode within the 150-250 ms range, a middle-grade repeating rhythm (Target 1) did not show a difference from a high-grade repeating rhythm (Target 2). However, in the later cognitive processes related to the P3b component around the Pz electrode within the 300-450 ms range, Target 1 had longer peak latency than Target 2, based on similar waveforms. Thus, we may suppose that the arrangement of the repeating graphics did not influence the earlier attentional processing but affected the later cognitive part, such as the categorization task in the oddball paradigm. Furthermore, as evidenced by the standard deviation wave across the trials, we suggest that the growing standard deviation value might represent the gradual loss of attentional focus to the task after the stimulus onset and that the zero-growth level may represent similar brain activity between trials.

Spaces Eliciting Negative and Positive Emotions in Shrinking Neighbourhoods: a Study in Seoul, South Korea, Using EEG (Electroencephalography)

Although shrinking neighbourhoods are places where urban citizens experience negative emotions, some evidence suggests that people in some shrinking neighbourhoods feel less negative emotions than in other areas. Nevertheless, empirical studies that analyse environmental and personal elements that affect people's emotions in a shrinking neighbourhood remain insufficient. This is rather surprising, considering an increasing interest in the effects of negative emotions on individuals' health. Thus, this study used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the impacts of environmental and personal characteristics on people's emotional levels in a shrinking area of Seoul, South Korea. A multilinear regression model was used to analyse emotional valence levels between sites with different urban designs and management levels. The results revealed that people felt positive emotions at sites where both urban design factors and their management were both satisfactory at appropriate levels. The results also found that people who had lived or worked in the neighbourhood for a long time and were women experienced more positive emotions than visitors and men. This finding implies that a shrinking neighbourhood can maintain a sense of satisfaction as long as the area is carefully managed. Revealing the emotional effects of environmental and personal characteristics in a shrinking neighbourhood can be used for planning practices and policy-making to create healthy and liveable urban neighbourhoods.

Spectral Characteristics of EEG during Active Emotional Musical Performance

The research on neural correlates of intentional emotion communication by the music performer is still limited. In this study, we attempted to evaluate EEG patterns recorded from musicians who were instructed to perform a simple piano score while manipulating their manner of play to express specific contrasting emotions and self-rate the emotion they reflected on the scales of arousal and valence. In the emotional playing task, participants were instructed to improvise variations in a manner by which the targeted emotion is communicated. In contrast, in the neutral playing task, participants were asked to play the same piece precisely as written to obtain data for control over general patterns of motor and sensory activation during playing. The spectral analysis of the signal was applied as an initial step to be able to connect findings to the wider field of music-emotion research. The experimental contrast of emotional playing vs. neutral playing was employed to probe brain activity patterns differentially involved in distinct emotional states. The tasks of emotional and neutral playing differed considerably with respect to the state of intended-to-transfer emotion arousal and valence levels. The EEG activity differences were observed between distressed/excited and neutral/depressed/relaxed playing.

Inter-brain co-activations during mindfulness meditation. Implications for devotional and clinical settings

Mindfulness meditation usually takes place as personal, introspective activity. It is not known if this practice activates the brain differently when done alone or with someone else. Sixteen couples of expert meditators performed mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) and instructed mind-wandering (IMW) tasks in two conditions: once sitting in the same room (SR) and once in two different rooms (DR). Spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) data was collected during 7-minute recording sessions in the four experimental settings (MOM/SR, MOM/DR, IMW/SR, IMW/DR). Power in band was computed in separate clusters of independent components of the EEG signals. In addition to significant task effects, found in frontolimbic (MOM > IMW in gamma) and frontoparietal locations (MOM < IMW in theta), significant condition effects were found in frontal (SR > DR in delta) and in temporo-occipital regions (SR > DR in theta and alpha). Moreover, a significant interaction between task and condition revealed higher gamma activity in limbic areas during MOM/SR vs. MOM/DR settings. This effect was not attributable to gender, age nor the meditation expertise of participants. We thus show that the brains of two people work differently when they are doing something together or alone; some of these differences are specific to mindfulness meditation. Implications for devotional and clinical settings are discussed.

Replicating Cortical Signatures May Open the Possibility for "Transplanting" Brain States via Brain Entrainment

Brain states, which correlate with specific motor, cognitive, and emotional states, may be monitored with noninvasive techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) that measure macroscopic cortical activity manifested as oscillatory network dynamics. These rhythmic cortical signatures provide insight into the neuronal activity used to identify pathological cortical function in numerous neurological and psychiatric conditions. Sensory and transcranial stimulation, entraining the brain with specific brain rhythms, can effectively induce desired brain states (such as state of sleep or state of attention) correlated with such cortical rhythms. Because brain states have distinct neural correlates, it may be possible to induce a desired brain state by replicating these neural correlates through stimulation. To do so, we propose recording brain waves from a "donor" in a particular brain state using EEG/MEG to extract cortical signatures of the brain state. These cortical signatures would then be inverted and used to entrain the brain of a "recipient" via sensory or transcranial stimulation. We propose that brain states may thus be transferred between people by acquiring an associated cortical signature from a donor, which, following processing, may be applied to a recipient through sensory or transcranial stimulation. This technique may provide a novel and effective neuromodulation approach to the noninvasive, non-pharmacological treatment of a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders for which current treatments are mostly limited to pharmacotherapeutic interventions.

Different theta connectivity patterns underlie pleasantness evoked by familiar and unfamiliar music

Music-evoked pleasantness has been extensively reported to be modulated by familiarity. Nevertheless, while the brain temporal dynamics underlying the process of giving value to music are beginning to be understood, little is known about how familiarity might modulate the oscillatory activity associated with music-evoked pleasantness. The goal of the present experiment was to study the influence of familiarity in the relation between theta phase synchronization and music-evoked pleasantness. EEG was recorded from 22 healthy participants while they were listening to both familiar and unfamiliar music and rating the experienced degree of evoked pleasantness. By exploring interactions, we found that right fronto-temporal theta synchronization was positively associated with music-evoked pleasantness when listening to unfamiliar music. On the contrary, inter-hemispheric temporo-parietal theta synchronization was positively associated with music-evoked pleasantness when listening to familiar music. These results shed some light on the possible oscillatory mechanisms underlying fronto-temporal and temporo-parietal connectivity and their relationship with music-evoked pleasantness and familiarity.

Spatial Connectivity and Temporal Dynamic Functional Network Connectivity of Musical Emotions Evoked by Dynamically Changing Tempo

Music tempo is closely connected to listeners' musical emotion and multifunctional neural activities. Music with increasing tempo evokes higher emotional responses and music with decreasing tempo enhances relaxation. However, the neural substrate of emotion evoked by dynamically changing tempo is still unclear. To investigate the spatial connectivity and temporal dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) of musical emotion evoked by dynamically changing tempo, we collected dynamic emotional ratings and conducted group independent component analysis (ICA), sliding time window correlations, and k-means clustering to assess the FNC of emotion evoked by music with decreasing tempo (180-65 bpm) and increasing tempo (60-180 bpm). Music with decreasing tempo (with more stable dynamic valences) evoked higher valence than increasing tempo both with stronger independent components (ICs) in the default mode network (DMN) and sensorimotor network (SMN). The dFNC analysis showed that with time-decreasing FNC across the whole brain, emotion evoked by decreasing music was associated with strong spatial connectivity within the DMN and SMN. Meanwhile, it was associated with strong FNC between the DMN-frontoparietal network (FPN) and DMN-cingulate-opercular network (CON). The paired t-test showed that music with a decreasing tempo evokes stronger activation of ICs within DMN and SMN than that with an increasing tempo, which indicated that faster music is more likely to enhance listeners' emotions with multifunctional brain activities even when the tempo is slowing down. With increasing FNC across the whole brain, music with an increasing tempo was associated with strong connectivity within FPN; time-decreasing connectivity was found within CON, SMN, VIS, and between CON and SMN, which explained its unstable valence during the dynamic valence rating. Overall, the FNC can help uncover the spatial and temporal neural substrates of musical emotions evoked by dynamically changing tempi.

On the estimate of music appraisal from surface EEG: a dynamic-network approach based on cross-sensor PAC measurements

Objective.The aesthetic evaluation of music is strongly dependent on the listener and reflects manifold brain processes that go well beyond the perception of incident sound. Being a high-level cognitive reaction, it is difficult to predict merely from the acoustic features of the audio signal and this poses serious challenges to contemporary music recommendation systems. We attempted to decode music appraisal from brain activity, recorded via wearable EEG, during music listening.Approach.To comply with the dynamic nature of music stimuli, cross-frequency coupling measurements were employed in a time-evolving manner to capture the evolving interactions between distinct brain-rhythms during music listening. Brain response to music was first represented as a continuous flow of functional couplings referring to both regional and inter-regional brain dynamics and then modelled as an ensemble of time-varying (sub)networks. Dynamic graph centrality measures were derived, next, as the final feature-engineering step and, lastly, a support-vector machine was trained to decode the subjective music appraisal. A carefully designed experimental paradigm provided the labeled brain signals.Main results.Using data from 20 subjects, dynamic programming to tailor the decoder to each subject individually and cross-validation, we demonstrated highly satisfactory performance (MAE= 0.948,R²= 0.63) that can be attributed, mostly, to interactions of left frontal gamma rhythm. In addition, our music-appraisal decoder was also employed in a part of the DEAP dataset with similar success. Finally, even a generic version of the decoder (common for all subjects) was found to perform sufficiently.Significance.A novel brain signal decoding scheme was introduced and validated empirically on suitable experimental data. It requires simple operations and leaves room for real-time implementation. Both the code and the experimental data are publicly available.

The effectiveness of emotion cognitive reappraisal as measured by self-reported response and its link to EEG alpha asymmetry

Cognitive reappraisal is an important emotion regulation skill for psychological health and well-being, however, some people cannot use this strategy effectively. We investigated EEG alpha asymmetry by calculating lateral index (LI) when twenty-six healthy participants were instructed to complete the emotion cognitive reappraisal task of viewing neutral pictures, watching negative pictures and reappraising negative pictures. According to self-reported valence and arousal, the participants were divided into effective and ineffective groups. Habitual use of rumination was also assessed using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ). EEG alpha asymmetry results demonstrated that, ineffective group showed greater relative right temporal activity than effective group in the early stage of reappraisal, indicating higher subjective arousal. Both groups showed greater relative left frontal alpha activity in the late stages of reappraisal compared with watching negative images, indicating the recruitment of corresponding functions in prefrontal regulatory circuitry during the effort of reappraisal. CERQ analysis results showed that, ineffective group got significantly higher score than effective group in habitual use of rumination. Partial correlation revealed that, in male participants, temporal LI change (negative-reappraisal minus negative-watch) was negatively correlated with self-reported arousal and habitual use of rumination. In addition, by using K-means cluster analysis, temporal LI combined with CERQ-rumination score achieved a classification accuracy of 84.6 %. These findings suggested that, EEG alpha asymmetry as well as the habitual use of rumination accounted for the reappraisal effectiveness.

Cortical Patterns of Pleasurable Musical Chills Revealed by High-Density EEG

Music has the capacity to elicit strong positive feelings in humans by activating the brain's reward system. Because group emotional dynamics is a central concern of social neurosciences, the study of emotion in natural/ecological conditions is gaining interest. This study aimed to show that high-density EEG (HD-EEG) is able to reveal patterns of cerebral activities previously identified by fMRI or PET scans when the subject experiences pleasurable musical chills. We used HD-EEG to record participants (11 female, 7 male) while listening to their favorite pleasurable chill-inducing musical excerpts; they reported their subjective emotional state from low pleasure up to chills. HD-EEG results showed an increase of theta activity in the prefrontal cortex when arousal and emotional ratings increased, which are associated with orbitofrontal cortex activation localized using source localization algorithms. In addition, we identified two specific patterns of chills: a decreased theta activity in the right central region, which could reflect supplementary motor area activation during chills and may be related to rhythmic anticipation processing, and a decreased theta activity in the right temporal region, which may be related to musical appreciation and could reflect the right superior temporal gyrus activity. The alpha frontal/prefrontal asymmetry did not reflect the felt emotional pleasure, but the increased frontal beta to alpha ratio (measure of arousal) corresponded to increased emotional ratings. These results suggest that EEG may be a reliable method and a promising tool for the investigation of group musical pleasure through musical reward processing.

Independent Components of EEG Activity Correlating with Emotional State

Among brain-computer interface studies, electroencephalography (EEG)-based emotion recognition is receiving attention and some studies have performed regression analyses to recognize small-scale emotional changes; however, effective brain regions in emotion regression analyses have not been identified yet. Accordingly, this study sought to identify neural activities correlating with emotional states in the source space. We employed independent component analysis, followed by a source localization method, to obtain distinct neural activities from EEG signals. After the identification of seven independent component (IC) clusters in a k-means clustering analysis, group-level regression analyses using frequency band power of the ICs were performed based on Russell's valence-arousal model. As a result, in the regression of the valence level, an IC cluster located in the cuneus predicted both high- and low-valence states and two other IC clusters located in the left precentral gyrus and the precuneus predicted the low-valence state. In the regression of the arousal level, the IC cluster located in the cuneus predicted both high- and low-arousal states and two posterior IC clusters located in the cingulate gyrus and the precuneus predicted the high-arousal state. In this proof-of-concept study, we revealed neural activities correlating with specific emotional states across participants, despite individual differences in emotional processing.

Exploring Frequency-Dependent Brain Networks from Ongoing EEG Using Spatial ICA During Music Listening

Recently, exploring brain activity based on functional networks during naturalistic stimuli especially music and video represents an attractive challenge because of the low signal-to-noise ratio in collected brain data. Although most efforts focusing on exploring the listening brain have been made through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), sensor-level electro- or magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) technique, little is known about how neural rhythms are involved in the brain network activity under naturalistic stimuli. This study exploited cortical oscillations through analysis of ongoing EEG and musical feature during freely listening to music. We used a data-driven method that combined music information retrieval with spatial Fourier Independent Components Analysis (spatial Fourier-ICA) to probe the interplay between the spatial profiles and the spectral patterns of the brain network emerging from music listening. Correlation analysis was performed between time courses of brain networks extracted from EEG data and musical feature time series extracted from music stimuli to derive the musical feature related oscillatory patterns in the listening brain. We found brain networks of musical feature processing were frequency-dependent. Musical feature time series, especially fluctuation centroid and key feature, were associated with an increased beta activation in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus. An increased alpha oscillation in the bilateral occipital cortex emerged during music listening, which was consistent with alpha functional suppression hypothesis in task-irrelevant regions. We also observed an increased delta-beta oscillatory activity in the prefrontal cortex associated with musical feature processing. In addition to these findings, the proposed method seems valuable for characterizing the large-scale frequency-dependent brain activity engaged in musical feature processing.

Fronto-temporal theta phase-synchronization underlies music-evoked pleasantness

Listening to pleasant music engages a complex distributed network including pivotal areas for auditory, reward, emotional and memory processing. On the other hand, frontal theta rhythms appear to be relevant in the process of giving value to music. However, it is not clear to which extent this oscillatory mechanism underlies the brain interactions that characterize music-evoked pleasantness and its related processes. The goal of the present experiment was to study brain synchronization in this oscillatory band as a function of music-evoked pleasantness. EEG was recorded from 25 healthy subjects while they were listening to music and rating the experienced degree of induced pleasantness. By using a multilevel Bayesian approach we found that phase synchronization in the theta band between right temporal and frontal signals increased with the degree of pleasure experienced by participants. These results show that slow fronto-temporal loops play a key role in music-evoked pleasantness.

Challenge for Affective Brain-Computer Interfaces: Non-stationary Spatio-spectral EEG Oscillations of Emotional Responses

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based affective brain-computer interfaces (aBCIs) have been attracting ever-growing interest and research resources. Whereas most previous neuroscience studies have focused on single-day/-session recording and sensor-level analysis, less effort has been invested in assessing the fundamental nature of non-stationary EEG oscillations underlying emotional responses across days and individuals. This work thus aimed to use a data-driven blind source separation method, i.e., independent component analysis (ICA), to derive emotion-relevant spatio-spectral EEG source oscillations and assess the extent of non-stationarity. To this end, this work conducted an 8-day music-listening experiment (i.e., roughly interspaced over 2 months) and recorded whole-scalp 30-ch EEG data from 10 subjects. Given the large size of the data (i.e., from 80 sessions), results indicated that EEG non-stationarity was clearly revealed in the numbers and locations of brain sources of interest as well as their spectral modulation to the emotional responses. Less than half of subjects (two to four) showed the same relatively day-stationary (source reproducibility >6 days) spatio-spectral tendency towards one of the binary valence and arousal states. This work substantially advances the previous work by exploiting intra- and inter-individual EEG variability in an ecological multiday scenario. Such EEG non-stationarity may inevitably present a great challenge for the development of an accurate, robust, and generalized emotion-classification model.

Functional connectivity of music-induced analgesia in fibromyalgia

Listening to self-chosen, pleasant and relaxing music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic centralized pain condition. However, the neural correlates of this effect are fairly unknown. In our study, we wished to investigate the neural correlates of music-induced analgesia (MIA) in FM patients. To do this, we studied 20 FM patients and 20 matched healthy controls (HC) acquiring rs-fMRI with a 3T MRI scanner, and pain data before and after two 5-min auditory conditions: music and noise. We performed resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) seed-based correlation analyses (SCA) using pain and analgesia-related ROIs to determine the effects before and after the music intervention in FM and HC, and its correlation with pain reports. We found significant differences in baseline rs-FC between FM and HC. Both groups showed changes in rs-FC after the music condition. FM patients reported MIA that was significantly correlated with rs-FC decrease between the angular gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, and rs-FC increase between amygdala and middle frontal gyrus. These areas are related to autobiographical and limbic processes, and auditory attention, suggesting MIA may arise as a consequence of top-down modulation, probably originated by distraction, relaxation, positive emotion, or a combination of these mechanisms.

Alteration of perceived emotion and brain functional connectivity by changing the musical rhythmic pattern

The arrangement of musical notes and their time intervals, also known as musical rhythm is one of the core elements of music. Nevertheless, the cognitive process and neural mechanism of the human brain that underlay the perception of musical rhythm are poorly understood. In this study, we hypothesized that changes in musical rhythmic patterns alter the emotional content expressed by music and the way it is perceived, that assumably causes specific changes in the brain functional connectome. Therefore, 18 male children aged 10-14 years old were recruited and exposed to 12 musical excerpts while their brain's electrical activity was recorded using a 32-channel EEG recorder. The musical rhythmic patterns were changed by manipulating only note values in beats while keeping time signature and other elements in a fixed state. The experienced emotions were assessed using a 2-dimensional self-assessment manikin questionnaire. The behavioral data showed that an increase in the complexity of musical rhythmic patterns significantly enhances perceived valence and arousal levels. In addition, the pattern of brain functional connectivity was also estimated using the weighted phase lag index and their association with behavioral changes was calculated. Interestingly, the behavioral changes were mainly associated with alteration of brain functional connectivity at the alpha band in the fronto-central connections. These results emphasize the important role of the motor cortical site-fronto-central connections, in the perception of musical rhythmic pattern. These findings may improve conception of the underlying brain mechanism involved in the perception of musical rhythm.

Electroencephalography reflects the activity of sub-cortical brain regions during approach-withdrawal behaviour while listening to music

The ability of music to evoke activity changes in the core brain structures that underlie the experience of emotion suggests that it has the potential to be used in therapies for emotion disorders. A large volume of research has identified a network of sub-cortical brain regions underlying music-induced emotions. Additionally, separate evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) studies suggests that prefrontal asymmetry in the EEG reflects the approach-withdrawal response to music-induced emotion. However, fMRI and EEG measure quite different brain processes and we do not have a detailed understanding of the functional relationships between them in relation to music-induced emotion. We employ a joint EEG – fMRI paradigm to explore how EEG-based neural correlates of the approach-withdrawal response to music reflect activity changes in the sub-cortical emotional response network. The neural correlates examined are asymmetry in the prefrontal EEG, and the degree of disorder in that asymmetry over time, as measured by entropy. Participants’ EEG and fMRI were recorded simultaneously while the participants listened to music that had been specifically generated to target the elicitation of a wide range of affective states. While listening to this music, participants also continuously reported their felt affective states. Here we report on co-variations in the dynamics of these self-reports, the EEG, and the sub-cortical brain activity. We find that a set of sub-cortical brain regions in the emotional response network exhibits activity that significantly relates to prefrontal EEG asymmetry. Specifically, EEG in the pre-frontal cortex reflects not only cortical activity, but also changes in activity in the amygdala, posterior temporal cortex, and cerebellum. We also find that, while the magnitude of the asymmetry reflects activity in parts of the limbic and paralimbic systems, the entropy of that asymmetry reflects activity in parts of the autonomic response network such as the auditory cortex. This suggests that asymmetry magnitude reflects affective responses to music, while asymmetry entropy reflects autonomic responses to music. Thus, we demonstrate that it is possible to infer activity in the limbic and paralimbic systems from pre-frontal EEG asymmetry. These results show how EEG can be used to measure and monitor changes in the limbic and paralimbic systems. Specifically, they suggest that EEG asymmetry acts as an indicator of sub-cortical changes in activity induced by music. This shows that EEG may be used as a measure of the effectiveness of music therapy to evoke changes in activity in the sub-cortical emotion response network. This is also the first time that the activity of sub-cortical regions, normally considered “invisible” to EEG, has been shown to be characterisable directly from EEG dynamics measured during music listening.

The neural underpinnings of music listening under different attention conditions

Most studies examining the neural underpinnings of music listening have no specific instruction on how to process the presented musical pieces. In this study, we explicitly manipulated the participants' focus of attention while they listened to the musical pieces. We used an ecologically valid experimental setting by presenting the musical stimuli simultaneously with naturalistic film sequences. In one condition, the participants were instructed to focus their attention on the musical piece (attentive listening), whereas in the second condition, the participants directed their attention to the film sequence (passive listening). We used two instrumental musical pieces: an electronic pop song, which was a major hit at the time of testing, and a classical musical piece. During music presentation, we measured electroencephalographic oscillations and responses from the autonomic nervous system (heart rate and high-frequency heart rate variability). During passive listening to the pop song, we found strong event-related synchronizations in all analyzed frequency bands (theta, lower alpha, upper alpha, lower beta, and upper beta). The neurophysiological responses during attentive listening to the pop song were similar to those of the classical musical piece during both listening conditions. Thus, the focus of attention had a strong influence on the neurophysiological responses to the pop song, but not on the responses to the classical musical piece. The electroencephalographic responses during passive listening to the pop song are interpreted as a neurophysiological and psychological state typically observed when the participants are 'drawn into the music'.

A Systematic Review for Human EEG Brain Signals Based Emotion Classification, Feature Extraction, Brain Condition, Group Comparison

The study of electroencephalography (EEG) signals is not a new topic. However, the analysis of human emotions upon exposure to music considered as important direction. Although distributed in various academic databases, research on this concept is limited. To extend research in this area, the researchers explored and analysed the academic articles published within the mentioned scope. Thus, in this paper a systematic review is carried out to map and draw the research scenery for EEG human emotion into a taxonomy. Systematically searched all articles about the, EEG human emotion based music in three main databases: ScienceDirect, Web of Science and IEEE Xplore from 1999 to 2016. These databases feature academic studies that used EEG to measure brain signals, with a focus on the effects of music on human emotions. The screening and filtering of articles were performed in three iterations. In the first iteration, duplicate articles were excluded. In the second iteration, the articles were filtered according to their titles and abstracts, and articles outside of the scope of our domain were excluded. In the third iteration, the articles were filtered by reading the full text and excluding articles outside of the scope of our domain and which do not meet our criteria. Based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, 100 articles were selected and separated into five classes. The first class includes 39 articles (39%) consists of emotion, wherein various emotions are classified using artificial intelligence (AI). The second class includes 21 articles (21%) is composed of studies that use EEG techniques. This class is named 'brain condition'. The third class includes eight articles (8%) is related to feature extraction, which is a step before emotion classification. That this process makes use of classifiers should be noted. However, these articles are not listed under the first class because these eight articles focus on feature extraction rather than classifier accuracy. The fourth class includes 26 articles (26%) comprises studies that compare between or among two or more groups to identify and discover human emotion-based EEG. The final class includes six articles (6%) represents articles that study music as a stimulus and its impact on brain signals. Then, discussed the five main categories which are action types, age of the participants, and number size of the participants, duration of recording and listening to music and lastly countries or authors' nationality that published these previous studies. it afterward recognizes the main characteristics of this promising area of science in: motivation of using EEG process for measuring human brain signals, open challenges obstructing employment and recommendations to improve the utilization of EEG process.

When listening to rain sounds boosts arithmetic ability

Studies in the literature have provided conflicting evidence about the effects of background noise or music on concurrent cognitive tasks. Some studies have shown a detrimental effect, while others have shown a beneficial effect of background auditory stimuli. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of agitating, happy or touching music, as opposed to environmental sounds or silence, on the ability of non-musician subjects to perform arithmetic operations. Fifty university students (25 women and 25 men, 25 introverts and 25 extroverts) volunteered for the study. The participants were administered 180 easy or difficult arithmetic operations (division, multiplication, subtraction and addition) while listening to heavy rain sounds, silence or classical music. Silence was detrimental when participants were faced with difficult arithmetic operations, as it was associated with significantly worse accuracy and slower RTs than music or rain sound conditions. This finding suggests that the benefit of background stimulation was not music-specific but possibly due to an enhanced cerebral alertness level induced by the auditory stimulation. Introverts were always faster than extroverts in solving mathematical problems, except when the latter performed calculations accompanied by the sound of heavy rain, a condition that made them as fast as introverts. While the background auditory stimuli had no effect on the arithmetic ability of either group in the easy condition, it strongly affected extroverts in the difficult condition, with RTs being faster during agitating or joyful music as well as rain sounds, compared to the silent condition. For introverts, agitating music was associated with faster response times than the silent condition. This group difference may be explained on the basis of the notion that introverts have a generally higher arousal level compared to extroverts and would therefore benefit less from the background auditory stimuli.

The role of music therapy in rehabilitation: improving aphasia and beyond

Music is part of the human nature, and it is also philogenically relevant to language evolution. Language and music are bound together in the enhancement of important social functions, such as communication, cooperation and social cohesion. In the last few years, there has been growing evidence that music and music therapy may improve communication skills (but not only) in different neurological disorders. One of the plausible reasons concerning the rational use of sound and music in neurorehabilitation is the possibility to stimulate brain areas involved in emotional processing and motor control, such as the fronto-parietal network. In this narrative review, we are going to describe the role of music therapy in improving aphasia and other neurological disorders, underlying the reasons why this tool could be effective in rehabilitative settings, especially in individuals affected by stroke.

Task Context Influences Brain Activation during Music Listening

In this paper, we examined brain activation in subjects during two music listening conditions: listening while simultaneously rating the musical piece being played [Listening and Rating (LR)] and listening to the musical pieces unconstrained [Listening (L)]. Using these two conditions, we tested whether the sequence in which the two conditions were fulfilled influenced the brain activation observable during the L condition (LR → L or L → LR). We recorded high-density EEG during the playing of four well-known positively experienced soundtracks in two subject groups. One group started with the L condition and continued with the LR condition (L → LR); the second group performed this experiment in reversed order (LR → L). We computed from the recorded EEG the power for different frequency bands (theta, lower alpha, upper alpha, lower beta, and upper beta). Statistical analysis revealed that the power in all examined frequency bands increased during the L condition but only when the subjects had not had previous experience with the LR condition (i.e., L → LR). For the subjects who began with the LR condition, there were no power increases during the L condition. Thus, the previous experience with the LR condition prevented subjects from developing the particular mental state associated with the typical power increase in all frequency bands. The subjects without previous experience of the LR condition listened to the musical pieces in an unconstrained and undisturbed manner and showed a general power increase in all frequency bands. We interpret the fact that unconstrained music listening was associated with increased power in all examined frequency bands as a neural indicator of a mental state that can best be described as a mind-wandering state during which the subjects are “drawn into” the music.

EEG Spectral Dynamics of Video Commercials: Impact of the Narrative on the Branding Product Preference

Neuromarketing has become popular and received a lot of attention. The quality of video commercials and the product information they convey to consumers is a hotly debated topic among advertising agencies and product advertisers. This study explored the impact of advertising narrative and the frequency of branding product exposures on the preference for the commercial and the branding product. We performed electroencephalography (EEG) experiments on 30 subjects while they watched video commercials. The behavioral data indicated that commercials with a structured narrative and containing multiple exposures of the branding products had a positive impact on the preference for the commercial and the branding product. The EEG spectral dynamics showed that the narratives of video commercials resulted in higher theta power of the left frontal, bilateral occipital region, and higher gamma power of the limbic system. The narratives also induced significant cognitive integration-related beta and gamma power of the bilateral temporal regions and the parietal region. It is worth noting that the video commercials with a single exposure of the branding products would be indicators of attention. These new findings suggest that the presence of a narrative structure in video commercials has a critical impact on the preference for branding products.