Different parts of the brain are activated in response to emotions in music vs emotions evoked by non-musical film clips. "Based on the activation of the auditory and motor cortex, we were able to accurately predict whether the research subject was listening to happy or sad music. The auditory cortex processes the acoustic elements of music, such as rhythm and melody. Activation of the motor cortex, then again, may be related to the fact that music inspires feelings of movement in the listeners even when they are listening to music while holding still in an MRI machine."
The film clips, on the other hand, "activate the deeper parts of the brain that regulate emotions in real-life situations. Listening to music did not strongly activate these regions nor did their activation separate the music-induced emotions from each other."
The music was instrumental, but not necessarily classical. The example video is Yngwie Malmsteen.
The brain regions activated by the music were the auditory, somatosensory, and motor cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, and precuneus. Fear, and if they liked the music, also engaged the amygdala.
The brain regions activated by the film clips were the limbic region and cortical regions.
They say they used "machine learning" but actually they just used statistical techniques, namely the general linear model and multivariate pattern analysis.
Music-induced Emotions Can Be Predicted from Brain Scans#
music #
statistics #
neuroscience
