Trait Empathy Shapes Neural Responses Toward Sad Music

EEG Microstate Associated with Trait Nostalgia

Nostalgia, a self-related emotion characterized by its bittersweet yet predominantly positive nature, plays a vital role in shaping individual psychology and behavior. This includes impacts on mental and physical health, behavioral patterns, and cognitive functions. However, higher levels of trait nostalgia may be linked to potential adverse outcomes, such as increased loneliness, heightened neuroticism, and more intense experiences of grief. The specific electroencephalography (EEG) feature associated with individuals exhibiting trait nostalgia, and how it differs from others, remains an area of uncertainty. To address this, our study employs microstate analysis to investigate the differences in resting-state EEG between individuals with varying levels of trait nostalgia. We assessed trait nostalgia in 63 participants using the Personal Inventory of Nostalgia and collected their resting-state EEG signals with eyes closed. The results of the regression analysis indicate a significant correlation between trait nostalgia and the temporal characteristics of microstates A, B, and C. Further, the occurrence of microstate B was significantly more frequent in the high trait nostalgia group than in the low trait nostalgia group. Independent samples t-test results showed that the transition probability between microstates A and B was significantly higher in the high trait nostalgia group. These results support the hypothesis that trait nostalgia is reflected in the resting state brain activity. Furthermore, they reveal a deeper sensory immersion in nostalgia experiences among individuals with high levels of trait nostalgia, and highlight the critical role of self-referential and autobiographical memory processes in nostalgia.

Treatments and regulatory mechanisms of acoustic stimuli on mood disorders and neurological diseases

Acoustic stimuli such as music or ambient noise can significantly affect physiological and psychological health in humans. We here summarize positive effects of music therapy in premature infant distress regulation, performance enhancement, sleep quality control, and treatment of mental disorders. Specifically, music therapy exhibits promising effects on treatment of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). We also highlight regulatory mechanisms by which auditory intervention affects an organism, encompassing modulation of immune responses, gene expression, neurotransmitter regulation and neural circuitry. As a safe, cost-effective and non-invasive intervention, music therapy offers substantial potential in treating a variety of neurological conditions.

The dual effect of background music on creativity: perspectives of music preference and cognitive interference

Music, an influential environmental factor, significantly shapes cognitive processing and everyday experiences, thus rendering its effects on creativity a dynamic topic within the field of cognitive science. However, debates continue about whether music bolsters, obstructs, or exerts a dual influence on individual creativity. Among the points of contention is the impact of contrasting musical emotions-both positive and negative-on creative tasks. In this study, we focused on traditional Chinese music, drawn from a culture known for its 'preference for sadness,' as our selected emotional stimulus and background music. This choice, underrepresented in previous research, was based on its uniqueness. We examined the effects of differing music genres (including vocal and instrumental), each characterized by a distinct emotional valence (positive or negative), on performance in the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). To conduct this study, we utilized an affective arousal paradigm, with a quiet background serving as a neutral control setting. A total of 114 participants were randomly assigned to three distinct groups after completing a music preference questionnaire: instrumental, vocal, and silent. Our findings showed that when compared to a quiet environment, both instrumental and vocal music as background stimuli significantly affected AUT performance. Notably, music with a negative emotional charge bolstered individual originality in creative performance. These results lend support to the dual role of background music in creativity, with instrumental music appearing to enhance creativity through factors such as emotional arousal, cognitive interference, music preference, and psychological restoration. This study challenges conventional understanding that only positive background music boosts creativity and provides empirical validation for the two-path model (positive and negative) of emotional influence on creativity.

Imitation encourages empathic capacity toward other individuals with physical disabilities

Many people have difficulty empathizing with others who have dissimilar characteristics, such as physical disabilities. We hypothesized that people with no disabilities imitating the movements of individuals with disabilities could improve the empathic capacity toward their difficulties. To evaluate this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity patterns of 26 healthy participants while they felt the difficulties of individuals with hemiplegia by adopting their perspective. The participants initially either imitated or observed hemiplegic hand movements shown in video clips. Subsequently, the videos were rewatched and their difficulties were rated. Analysis of the subjective rating scores indicated that after imitating the hemiplegic movements, the participants felt into the difficulties of hemiplegia better than if they simply observed them. The cross-validation approach of multivoxel pattern analyses demonstrated that the information regarding the effect of imitation on empathizing with the difficulties was represented in specific activation patterns of brain regions involved in the mirror neuron system and cognitive empathy by comparing to other conditions that did not contain the information. The cross-classification approach detected distinct activation patterns in the brain regions involved in affective and cognitive empathy, commonly while imitating the hemiplegic movements and subsequently feeling them. This indicated that the common representation related to these two types of empathy existed between imitating and feeling the hemiplegic movements. Furthermore, representational similarity analysis revealed that activity patterns in the anterior cingulate cortex linked to affective empathy tuned to the subjective assessment of hemiplegic movements. Our findings indicate that imitating the movements of individuals with hemiplegia triggered the affective empathic response and improved the cognitive empathic response toward them. The affective empathic response also linked the subjective assessment to the difficulties of hemiplegia, which was especially modulated by the experience of imitation. Imitating the movements of individuals with disabilities likely encourages empathic capacity from both affective and cognitive aspects, resulting in people with no disabilities precisely feeling what they are feeling.

Mindfulness Meditation Improves Musical Aesthetic Emotion Processing in Young Adults

This study explored the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness meditation improvement in musical aesthetic emotion processing (MAEP) in young adults, using the revised across-modal priming paradigm. Sixty-two participants were selected from 652 college students who assessed their mindfulness traits using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). According to the 27% ratio of the high and low total scores, participants were divided into two subgroups: high trait group (n = 31) and low trait group (n = 31). Participants underwent facial recognition and emotional arousal tasks while listening to music, and simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The N400, P3, and late positive component (LPC) were investigated. The behavioral results showed that mindfulness meditation improved executive control abilities in emotional face processing and effectively regulated the emotional arousal of repeated listening to familiar music among young adults. These improvements were associated with positive changes in key neural signatures of facial recognition (smaller P3 and larger LPC effects) and emotional arousal (smaller N400 and larger LPC effects). Our results show that P3, N400, and LPC are important neural markers for the improvement of executive control and regulating emotional arousal in musical aesthetic emotion processing, providing new evidence for exploring attention training and emotional processing. We revised the affecting priming paradigm and E-prime 3.0 procedure to fulfill the simultaneous measurement of music listening and experimental tasks and provide a new experimental paradigm to simultaneously detect the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness-based musical aesthetic processing.

Music influences vividness and content of imagined journeys in a directed visual imagery task

Directed, intentional imagination is pivotal for self-regulation in the form of escapism and therapies for a wide variety of mental health conditions, such anxiety and stress disorders, as well as phobias. Clinical application in particular benefits from increasing our understanding of imagination, as well as non-invasive means of influencing it. To investigate imagination, this study draws from the prior observation that music can influence the imagined content during non-directed mind-wandering, as well as the finding that relative orientation within time and space is retained in imagination. One hundred participants performed a directed imagination task that required watching a video of a figure travelling towards a barely visible landmark, and then closing their eyes and imagining a continuation of the journey. During each imagined journey, participants either listened to music or silence. After the imagined journeys, participants reported vividness, the imagined time passed and distance travelled, as well as the imagined content. Bayesian mixed effects models reveal strong evidence that vividness, sentiment, as well imagined time passed and distances travelled, are influenced by the music, and show that aspects of these effects can be modelled through features such as tempo. The results highlight music's potential to support therapies such as Exposure Therapy and Imagery Rescripting, which deploy directed imagination as a clinical tool.

Engagement in Music-Related Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic as a Mirror of Individual Differences in Musical Reward and Coping Strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate its impact (e.g., confinement orders) have affected people's lives in profound ways that would have been unimagable only months before the pandemic began. Media reports from the height of the pandemic's initial international surge frequently highlighted that many people were engaging in music-related activities (from singing and dancing to playing music from balconies and attending virtual concerts) to help them cope with the strain of the pandemic. Our first goal in this study was to investigate changes in music-related habits due to the pandemic. We also investigated whether engagement in distinct music-related activities (singing, listening, dancing, etc.) was associated with individual differences in musical reward, music perception, musical training, or emotional regulation strategies. To do so, we collected detailed (~1 h-long) surveys during the initial peak of shelter-in-place order implementation (May-June 2020) from over a thousand individuals across different Countries in which the pandemic was especially devastating at that time: the USA, Spain, and Italy. Our findings indicate that, on average, people spent more time in music-related activities while under confinement than they had before the pandemic. Notably, this change in behavior was dependent on individual differences in music reward sensitivity, and in emotional regulation strategies. Finally, the type of musical activity with which individuals engaged was further associated with the degree to which they used music as a way to regulate stress, to address the lack of social interaction (especially the individuals more concerned about the risk of contracting the virus), or to cheer themselves up (especially those who were more worried about the pandemic consequences). Identifying which music-related activities have been particularly sought for by the population as a means for coping with such heightened uncertainty and stress, and understanding the individual differences that underlie said propensities are crucial to implementing personalized music-based interventions that aim to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms.