- Researchers at the University of Turku aimed to discover the brain regions responsible for bringing about music-evoked emotions.
- They, therefore, conducted brain scans while the study participants listened to emotionally engaging pieces of music.
- Furthermore, they also compared how the brain regions differed for non-music emotions.
In early March videos began to emerge of Italians singing and playing instruments on their balconies. Whole neighborhoods erupted with sounds of music as people learned to cope with the looming anxiousness of surviving a pandemic. Inspired by the Italians, people all over the world turned to music as a refuge. Further adding to music’s impact on our lives. Thus, it is no surprise that music-evoked emotions are a source of fascination for scientists across the world.
Researchers at the University of Turku have now decoded the brain regions responsible for bringing about these emotional responses using a machine learning algorithm. They published their findings in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
Brain Scans Help Analyse Music-Evoked Emotions
As a part of the study, over 100 participants listened to happy, sad, fearful, and tender pieces of instrumental music. While the participants listened to music, researchers conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. fMRI scans can measure the blood flow through different parts of the brain, thus, revealing the brain activity in different regions. The results of the brain scans were analyzed for the four different categories of music-evoked emotions.
We wanted to use only instrumental music in this study as well so that lyrics did not impact the emotions of the research subjects. However, we included film music and songs by the guitar virtuoso Yngwie J. Malmsteen.
Vesa Putkinen, Postdoctoral Researcher
Additionally, the participants also watched emotionally charged film clips while undergoing fMRI scans. The researchers aimed to analyze the difference in neural mechanisms for music and non-music emotions. Next, they used a machine learning algorithm to identify the different brain regions activated by the various music-induced emotions.
Music vs Non-Music Emotions
The results showed that compared to music, the video clips activated a much deeper part of the brain. That is the limbic and cortical region of the brain. These are normally involved in processing real-life emotions. Researchers suggest that this is likely because films often mimic real-life events which can activate the person’s emotional mechanism.
On the other hand, music-evoked emotions activated parts of the brain responsible for interoception. Furthermore, researchers also noted activity in the amygdala of the brain when participants listened to fearful music. Amygdala is the part of the brain involved in activating the body’s ‘fear or flight’ response.
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, maybe 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.
Vesa Putkinen, Postdoctoral Researcher
Thus, the researchers conclude that music-evoked emotions activate different regions in the brain. However, these rely more on the auditory and motor regions of the brain and not those responsible for emotional processing.
Reference:
Putkinen, V., et al. (2020) Decoding Music-Evoked Emotions in the Auditory and Motor Cortex. Cerebral Cortex. doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa373.
