1,721,060 research outputs found
The urge to judge: Why the judgmental attitude has anything to do with the aesthetic enjoyment of negative emotions
No full textBased on arguments from both philosophical and empirical aesthetics, we hereby propose that the enjoyment of negative emotions in art and fiction is distinct from the immediate pleasure deriving from sensory features, because it requires a conscious, intentional attitude toward the object. This attitude is linked with the compelling goal of providing a judgment of liking, beauty, perfection, or similar
Brain-to-brain coupling and culture as prerequisites for musical interaction
No full textAn important cue for belongingness and identity to a certain society is constituted by music. When listening to any musical piece, the organization of the music can be processed and recognized by virtually all members of a society according to specific grammatical rules for pitch and rhythmic structures (scales, chords, meter), the preference for certain timbres, musical instruments, and performance styles. The stylistic components that determine which sound events are allowed, along with several other learned ways of making and using music that are shared by a group of people, characterize what is known as musical culture. Similarly to languages, there are many musical cultures in the world. Hence, music can be considered as a model to study cultural adaptation, defined as the process by which individuals acquire culture-specific knowledge through everyday experiences (e.g., listening to the radio, singing, playing, dancing, going to concerts, studying). The goals of this chapter are two-fold: (1) to review brain evidence on cultural adaptation to a musical system (particularly, Western tonal); and (2) to propose a new hypothesis according to which brain-to-brain coupling following cultural adaptation might be a necessary prerequisite for a successful musical interaction
Putting cells in motion: Advantages of endogenous boosting of BDNF production
Full text linkMotor exercise, such as sport or musical activities, helps with a plethora of diseases by modulating brain functions in neocortical and subcortical regions, resulting in behavioural changes related to mood regulation, well-being, memory, and even cognitive preservation in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Although evidence is accumulating on the systemic neural mechanisms mediating these brain effects, the specific mechanisms by which exercise acts upon the cellular level are still under investigation. This is particularly the case for music training, a much less studied instance of motor exercise than sport. With regards to sport, consistent neurobiological research has focused on the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), an essential player in the central nervous system. BDNF stimulates the growth and differentiation of neurons and synapses. It thrives in the hippocampus, the cortex, and the basal forebrain, which are the areas vital for memory, learning, and higher cognitive functions. Animal models and neurocognitive experiments on human athletes converge in demonstrating that physical exercise reliably boosts BDNF levels. In this review, we highlight comparable early findings obtained with animal models and elderly humans exposed to musical stimulation, showing how perceptual exposure to music might affect BDNF release, similar to what has been observed for sport. We subsequently propose a novel hypothesis that relates the neuroplastic changes in the human brains after musical training to genetically-and exercise-driven BDNF levels
Applying acoustical and musicological analysis to detect brain responses to realistic music: A case study
Full text linkMusic information retrieval (MIR) methods offer interesting possibilities for automatically identifying time points in music recordings that relate to specific brain responses. However, how the acoustical features and the novelty of the music structure affect the brain response is not yet clear. In the present study, we tested a new method for automatically identifying time points of brain responses based on MIR analysis. We utilized an existing database including brain recordings of 48 healthy listeners measured with electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). While we succeeded in capturing brain responses related to acoustical changes in the modern tango piece Adios Nonino, we obtained less reliable brain responses with a metal rock piece and a modern symphony orchestra musical composition. However, brain responses might also relate to the novelty of the music structure. Hence, we added a manual musicological analysis of novelty in the musical structure to the computational acoustic analysis, obtaining strong brain responses even to the rock and modern pieces. Although no standardized method yet exists, these preliminary results suggest that analysis of novelty in music is an important aid to MIR analysis for investigating brain responses to realistic music
Empathy but not musicality is at the root of musical reward: A behavioral study with adults and children
Full text linkMusic is one of the most pleasurable human experiences. However, the determinants of the variation in individual sensitivity to musical reward are not yet fully unraveled. Empathy has been identified as a determinant of musical affect, including consciously experiencing pleasure from listening to sad music. Additionally, higher musical expertise may enhance pleasurable responses to music, whereas aging decreases individual sensitivity to musical pleasure. We conducted a study to investigate the contribution of empathy and musical abilities on musical pleasure, measured by Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Musical Ear Test, and Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire, respectively. To this purpose, we performed a developmental comparison between 48 children (9–11 years old) and 42 adults (18–32 years old). Our findings suggest that individual sensitivity to musical reward is positively correlated with empathy trait in both adults and children, but not with musical abilities. However, when inserted in a regression model including empathy, musical abilities are also predictive of musical reward, but only among adults. These results show that empathy plays a crucial role in determining the individual sensitivity to music reward, whereas musical abilities are less influential. More broadly, this study contributes to shed light on the determinants of the emotional responses to music affect
Comprehensive auditory discrimination profiles recorded with a fast parametric musical multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm
No full textObjective: Mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) in response to auditory-expectancy violation, is sensitive to central auditory processing deficits associated with several clinical conditions and to auditory skills deriving from musical expertise. This sensitivity is more evident for stimuli integrated in complex sound contexts. This study tested whether increasing magnitudes of deviation (levels) entail increasing MMN amplitude (or decreasing latency), aiming to create a balanced version of the musical multi-feature paradigm towards measurement of extensive auditory discrimination profiles in auditory expertise or deficits. Methods: Using electroencephalography, we measured MMNs in healthy young adults to six types of sound feature change (pitch, timbre, location, intensity, slide and rhythm) at three different magnitudes of deviation, embedded in a music-sounding context. We also behaviourally assessed the individual musical aptitude using the Musical Ear Test (MET). Results: 16 of 18 sound feature changes elicited significant MMNs. For pitch, intensity, location, and slide, the MMN amplitude increased with increasing magnitude of feature change. We observed a ceiling effect for rhythm, and a floor effect for timbre. The slide MMN amplitude correlated positively with MET melody score and negatively with MET rhythm score. Conclusions: This novel paradigm provides an extensive, objective measure of auditory discrimination profile for different sound features embedded in a complex sound context. Significance: The paradigm can be adopted to study the neurophysiology of individuals with music processing difficulties or with special musical skills, and may be a useful tool for investigating development, plasticity, and deficits of auditory processing
Global Sensory Qualities and Aesthetic Experience in Music
Full text linkA well-known tradition in the study of visual aesthetics holds that the experience of visual beauty is grounded in global computational or statistical properties of the stimulus, for example, scale-invariant Fourier spectrum or self-similarity. Some approaches rely on neural mechanisms, such as efficient computation, processing fluency, or the responsiveness of the cells in the primary visual cortex. These proposals are united by the fact that the contributing factors are hypothesized to be global (i.e., they concern the percept as a whole), formal or non-conceptual (i.e., they concern form instead of content), computational and/or statistical, and based on relatively low-level sensory properties. Here we consider that the study of aesthetic responses to music could benefit from the same approach. Thus, along with local features such as pitch, tuning, consonance/dissonance, harmony, timbre, or beat, also global sonic properties could be viewed as contributing toward creating an aesthetic musical experience. Several such properties are discussed and their neural implementation is reviewed in the light of recent advances in neuroaesthetics
The forgotten artist: Why to consider intentions and interaction in a model of aesthetic experience: Comment on “Move me, astonish me. delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top–down and bottom–up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates” by Matthew Pelowski et al
No full textIn their target article published in this journal issue, Pelowski et al. address the question of how humans experi-ence, and respond to, visual art. In our commentary, we would like to draw attention to certain aspects of art that are difficult to scrutinize by means of individualist information-processing models, and whose role is consequently often neglected
Fractionating auditory priors: A neural dissociation between active and passive experience of musical sounds
Full text linkLearning, attention and action play a crucial role in determining how stimulus predictions are formed, stored, and updated. Years-long experience with the specific repertoires of sounds of one or more musical styles is what characterizes professional musicians. Here we contrasted active experience with sounds, namely long-lasting motor practice, theoretical study and engaged listening to the acoustic features characterizing a musical style of choice in professional musicians with mainly passive experience of sounds in laypersons. We hypothesized that long-term active experience of sounds would influence the neural predictions of the stylistic features in professional musicians in a distinct way from the mainly passive experience of sounds in laypersons. Participants with different musical backgrounds were recruited: professional jazz and classical musicians, amateur musicians and non-musicians. They were presented with a musical multi-feature paradigm eliciting mismatch negativity (MMN), a prediction error signal to changes in six sound features for only 12 minutes of electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. We observed a generally larger MMN amplitudes-indicative of stronger automatic neural signals to violated priors-in jazz musicians (but not in classical musicians) as compared to non-musicians and amateurs. The specific MMN enhancements were found for spectral features (timbre, pitch, slide) and sound intensity. In participants who were not musicians, the higher preference for jazz music was associated with reduced MMN to pitch slide (a feature common in jazz music style). Our results suggest that long-lasting, active experience of a musical style is associated with accurate neural priors for the sound features of the preferred style, in contrast to passive listening
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