Across many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Sc... more Across many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Scream calls were often thought to be of generic alarming and fearful nature, to signal potential threats, with instantaneous, involuntary, and accurate recognition by perceivers. However, scream calls are more diverse in their affective signaling nature than being limited to fearfully alarming a threat, and thus the broader sociobiological relevance of various scream types is unclear. Here we used 4 different psychoacoustic, perceptual decision-making, and neuroimaging experiments in humans to demonstrate the existence of at least 6 psychoacoustically distinctive types of scream calls of both alarming and non-alarming nature, rather than there being only screams caused by fear or aggression. Second, based on perceptual and processing sensitivity measures for decision-making during scream recognition, we found that alarm screams (with some exceptions) were overall discriminated the worst, ...
ABSTRACTAcross many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other ag... more ABSTRACTAcross many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Scream calls were often supposed to be of generic alarming and fearful nature to signal potential threats including their instantaneous, involuntary, and accurate recognition by perceivers. However, scream calls are more diverse in their affective signaling nature than being limited to fearfully alarm a threat, and thus the broader sociobiological relevance of various scream types is unclear. Here we used four different psychoacoustic, perceptual decision-making, and neuroimaging experiments in humans to demonstrate, first, the existence of at least six generic and psycho-acoustically distinctive types of scream calls of both an alarming and a non-alarming nature, rather than being limited to only screams caused by fear or aggression. Second, based on perceptual and processing sensitivity measures for decision-making during scream recognition, we found that alarming screams (with s...
Beyond normal and non-imitative singing, the imitation of the timbre of another singer's voice, s... more Beyond normal and non-imitative singing, the imitation of the timbre of another singer's voice, such as in Karaoke singing, involves the demanding reproduction of voice quality features and strongly depends on singing experience and practice. We show that precise voice imitation in a highly proficient and experienced vocal imitator, even in the absence of external auditory voice feedback, largely drew on internal cortico-subcortical auditory resources to control voicing errors based on imagined voice performance. Compared to the experienced vocal imitator, singers of a control group without experience in voice imitation used only sensorimotor feedback and demanding monitoring resources for imitation in the absence of voice feedback, a neural strategy that led, however, to a significantly poorer vocal performance. Thus, only long-term vocal imitation experience allows for the additional use of internal auditory brain resources, which result from training-induced brain plasticity, and which enable accurate vocal performance even under difficult performance conditions.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, Sep 14, 2016
Affective sounds are an integral part of the natural and social environment that shape and influe... more Affective sounds are an integral part of the natural and social environment that shape and influence behavior across a multitude of species. In human primates, these affective sounds span a repertoire of environmental and human sounds when we vocalize or produce music. In terms of neural processing, cortical and subcortical brain areas constitute a distributed network that supports our listening experience to these affective sounds. Taking an exhaustive cross-domain view, we accordingly suggest a common neural network that facilitates the decoding of the emotional meaning from a wide source of sounds rather than a traditional view that postulates distinct neural systems for specific affective sound types. This new integrative neural network view unifies the decoding of affective valence in sounds, and ascribes differential as well as complementary functional roles to specific nodes within a common neural network. It also highlights the importance of an extended brain network beyond ...
To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both ... more To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both affective responses and underlying brain activity. Here, we investigated emotions induced by music using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a data-driven approach based on intersubject correlations (ISC). This method allowed us to identify moments in the music that produced similar brain activity (i.e. synchrony) among listeners under relatively natural listening conditions. Continuous ratings of subjective pleasantness and arousal elicited by the music were also obtained for the music outside of the scanner. Our results reveal synchronous activations in left amygdala, left insula and right caudate nucleus that were associated with higher arousal, whereas positive valence ratings correlated with decreases in amygdala and caudate activity. Additional analyses showed that synchronous amygdala responses were driven by energy-related features in the music such as root mean square and dissonance, while synchrony in insula was additionally sensitive to acoustic event density. Intersubject synchrony also occurred in the left nucleus accumbens, a region critically implicated in reward processing. Our study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of an approach based on ISC to explore the temporal dynamics of music perception and emotion in naturalistic conditions.
Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investi... more Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investigated in neuroscience. Here, we used functional neuroimaging with parametric analyses based on the intensity of felt emotions to explore a wider spectrum of affective responses reported during music listening. Positive emotions correlated with activation of left striatum and insula when higharousing (Wonder, Joy) but right striatum and orbitofrontal cortex when low-arousing (Nostalgia, Tenderness). Irrespective of their positive/negative valence, high-arousal emotions (Tension, Power, and Joy) also correlated with activations in sensory and motor areas, whereas low-arousal categories (Peacefulness, Nostalgia, and Sadness) selectively engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The right parahippocampal cortex activated in all but positive high-arousal conditions. Results also suggested some blends between activation patterns associated with different classes of emotions, particularly for feelings of Wonder or Transcendence. These data reveal a differentiated recruitment across emotions of networks involved in reward, memory, self-reflective, and sensorimotor processes, which may account for the unique richness of musical emotions.
Background The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) recently revised it... more Background The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) recently revised its definition and diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia, placing muscle strength at the forefront. The pathogenesis of dynapenia (or low muscle strength) is still not fully understood, but there is emerging evidence that central neural factors constitute critical determinants. Methods Our cross-sectional study included 59 community-dwelling older women (mean age 73.1 ± 4.9 years). Participants underwent detailed skeletal muscle assessments for muscle strength defined by handgrip strength and chair rise time measurements using the recently published EWGSOP2 cut-off points. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was assessed during the performance of a cognitive dual-task paradigm, consisting of a baseline, two single-tasks (motor and arithmetic) and one dual-task (motor and arithmetic combined). Results Forty-seven percent (28/59) of participants were classified as dynapenic. fMRI resul...
Mode and tempo are known to influence affective experiences during music listening. While mode (m... more Mode and tempo are known to influence affective experiences during music listening. While mode (major/minor) is associated with emotional valence (positive/negative), tempo (slow/fast) is associated with emotional arousal (calm/excited). Heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) are also thought to adapt (entrain) to the tempo, leading to emotion elicitation via afferent feedback mechanisms. Here, we tested the influence of mode, tempo, and entrainment on affective experiences by recording HR, RR, and self-reported subjective entrainment and affect measures while participants ( N = 20) listened to major and minor chords embedded in slow and fast isochronous, metrical, and random sequences. Though there was no effect of tempo on HR or RR, both were faster during major and metrically random chord sequences, respectively. Slower HR positively predicted visceral entrainment (VE) ratings, the extent to which one feels one’s internal rhythms changing, and fast tempo positively predicted m...
One especially important feature of metrical music is that it contains periodicities that listene... more One especially important feature of metrical music is that it contains periodicities that listeners' bodily rhythms can adapt to. Recent psychological frameworks have introduced the notion of rhythmic entrainment, among other mechanisms, as an emotion induction principle. In this review paper, we discuss rhythmic entrainment as an affect induction mechanism by differentiating four levels of entrainment in humans-perceptual, autonomic physiological, motor, and social-all of which could contribute to a subjective feeling component. We review the theoretical and empirical literature on rhythmic entrainment to music that supports the existence of these different levels of entrainment by describing the phenomena and characterizing the associated underlying brain processes. The goal of this review is to present the theoretical implications and empirical findings about rhythmic entrainment as an important principle at the basis of affect induction via music, since it rests upon the temporal dimension of music, which is a specificity of music as an affective stimulus.
Whispering is a unique expression mode that is specific to auditory communication. Individuals sw... more Whispering is a unique expression mode that is specific to auditory communication. Individuals switch their vocalization mode to whispering especially when affected by inner emotions in certain social contexts, such as in intimate relationships or intimidating social interactions. Although this context-dependent whispering is adaptive, whispered voices are acoustically far less rich than phonated voices and thus impose higher hearing and neural auditory decoding demands for recognizing their socio-affective value by listeners. The neural dynamics underlying this recognition especially from whispered voices are largely unknown. Here we show that whispered voices in humans are considerably impoverished as quantified by an entropy measure of spectral acoustic information, and this missing information needs large-scale neural compensation in terms of auditory and cognitive processing. Notably, recognizing the socio-affective information from voices was slightly more difficult from whisp...
To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both ... more To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both affective responses and underlying brain activity. Here we investigated emotions induced by music using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a data-driven approach based on inter-subject correlations (ISC). This method allowed us to identify moments in the music that produced similar brain activity (i.e. synchrony) among listeners under relatively natural listening conditions. Continuous ratings of subjective pleasantness and arousal elicited by the music were also obtained for the music outside of the scanner. Our results reveal synchronous activations in left amygdala, left insula, and right caudate nucleus that were associated with higher arousal, whereas positive valence ratings correlated with decreases in amygdala and caudate activity. Additional analyses showed that synchronous amygdala responses were driven by energy-related features in the music such as rms and dissonance, while synchrony in insula was additionally sensitive to acoustic event density. Inter-subject synchrony also occurred in the left nucleus accumbens, a region critically implicated in reward processing. Our study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of an approach based on ISC to explore the temporal dynamics of music perception and emotion in naturalistic conditions.
Rhythmic entrainment is an important component of emotion induction by music, but brain circuits ... more Rhythmic entrainment is an important component of emotion induction by music, but brain circuits recruited during spontaneous entrainment of attention by music and the influence of the subjective emotional feelings evoked by music remain still largely unresolved. In this study we used fMRI to test whether the metric structure of music entrains brain activity and how music pleasantness influences such entrainment. Participants listened to piano music while performing a speeded visuomotor detection task in which targets appeared time-locked to either strong or weak beats. Each musical piece was presented in both a consonant/pleasant and dissonant/unpleasant version. Consonant music facilitated target detection and targets presented synchronously with strong beats were detected faster. FMRI showed increased activation of bilateral caudate nucleus when responding on strong beats, whereas consonance enhanced activity in attentional networks. Meter and consonance selectively interacted in the caudate nucleus, with greater meter effects during dissonant than consonant music. These results reveal that the basal ganglia, involved both in emotion and rhythm processing, critically contribute to rhythmic entrainment of subcortical brain circuits by music.
Producing and perceiving music engage a wide range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and emotional proc... more Producing and perceiving music engage a wide range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and emotional processes. Emotions are a central feature of the enjoyment of music, with a large variety of affective states consistently reported by people while listening to music. However, besides joy or sadness, music often elicits feelings of wonder, nostalgia, or tenderness, which do not correspond to emotion categories typically studied in neuroscience and whose neural substrates remain largely unknown. Here we review the similarities and differences in the neural substrates underlying these "complex" music-evoked emotions relative to other more "basic" emotional experiences. We suggest that these emotions emerge through a combination of activation in emotional and motivational brain systems (e.g., including reward pathways) that confer its valence to music, with activation in several other areas outside emotional systems, including motor, attention, or memory-related regions. We...
Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to decode th... more Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to decode the emotional value of sensory information. Recent neuroimaging studies, as well as lesion studies in patients, have shown that the amygdala is sensitive to emotions in voice and music. Similarly, the hippocampus, another part of the temporal limbic system (TLS), is responsive to vocal and musical emotions, but its specific roles in emotional processing from music and especially from voices have been largely neglected. Here we review recent research on vocal and musical emotions, and outline commonalities and differences in the neural processing of emotions in the TLS in terms of emotional valence, emotional intensity and arousal, as well as in terms of acoustic and structural features of voices and music. We summarize the findings in a neural framework including several subcortical and cortical functional pathways between the auditory system and the TLS. This framework proposes that some ...
Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by en... more Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by entrainment to an auditory rhythmic stimulus. In the first experiment, participants carried out a detection and discrimination tasks with auditory and visual targets while listening to an isochronous, auditory sequence, which acted as the entraining stimulus. For the second experiment, we used musical extracts as entraining stimulus, and tested the resulting strength of entrainment with a visual discrimination task. Both experiments used reaction times as a dependent variable. By manipulating the appearance of targets across four selected metrical positions of the auditory entraining stimulus we were able to observe how entraining to a rhythm modulates behavioural responses. That our results were independent of modality gives a new insight into cross-modal interactions between auditory and visual modalities in the context of dynamic attending to auditory temporal structure.
Across many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Sc... more Across many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Scream calls were often thought to be of generic alarming and fearful nature, to signal potential threats, with instantaneous, involuntary, and accurate recognition by perceivers. However, scream calls are more diverse in their affective signaling nature than being limited to fearfully alarming a threat, and thus the broader sociobiological relevance of various scream types is unclear. Here we used 4 different psychoacoustic, perceptual decision-making, and neuroimaging experiments in humans to demonstrate the existence of at least 6 psychoacoustically distinctive types of scream calls of both alarming and non-alarming nature, rather than there being only screams caused by fear or aggression. Second, based on perceptual and processing sensitivity measures for decision-making during scream recognition, we found that alarm screams (with some exceptions) were overall discriminated the worst, ...
ABSTRACTAcross many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other ag... more ABSTRACTAcross many species, scream calls signal the affective significance of events to other agents. Scream calls were often supposed to be of generic alarming and fearful nature to signal potential threats including their instantaneous, involuntary, and accurate recognition by perceivers. However, scream calls are more diverse in their affective signaling nature than being limited to fearfully alarm a threat, and thus the broader sociobiological relevance of various scream types is unclear. Here we used four different psychoacoustic, perceptual decision-making, and neuroimaging experiments in humans to demonstrate, first, the existence of at least six generic and psycho-acoustically distinctive types of scream calls of both an alarming and a non-alarming nature, rather than being limited to only screams caused by fear or aggression. Second, based on perceptual and processing sensitivity measures for decision-making during scream recognition, we found that alarming screams (with s...
Beyond normal and non-imitative singing, the imitation of the timbre of another singer's voice, s... more Beyond normal and non-imitative singing, the imitation of the timbre of another singer's voice, such as in Karaoke singing, involves the demanding reproduction of voice quality features and strongly depends on singing experience and practice. We show that precise voice imitation in a highly proficient and experienced vocal imitator, even in the absence of external auditory voice feedback, largely drew on internal cortico-subcortical auditory resources to control voicing errors based on imagined voice performance. Compared to the experienced vocal imitator, singers of a control group without experience in voice imitation used only sensorimotor feedback and demanding monitoring resources for imitation in the absence of voice feedback, a neural strategy that led, however, to a significantly poorer vocal performance. Thus, only long-term vocal imitation experience allows for the additional use of internal auditory brain resources, which result from training-induced brain plasticity, and which enable accurate vocal performance even under difficult performance conditions.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, Sep 14, 2016
Affective sounds are an integral part of the natural and social environment that shape and influe... more Affective sounds are an integral part of the natural and social environment that shape and influence behavior across a multitude of species. In human primates, these affective sounds span a repertoire of environmental and human sounds when we vocalize or produce music. In terms of neural processing, cortical and subcortical brain areas constitute a distributed network that supports our listening experience to these affective sounds. Taking an exhaustive cross-domain view, we accordingly suggest a common neural network that facilitates the decoding of the emotional meaning from a wide source of sounds rather than a traditional view that postulates distinct neural systems for specific affective sound types. This new integrative neural network view unifies the decoding of affective valence in sounds, and ascribes differential as well as complementary functional roles to specific nodes within a common neural network. It also highlights the importance of an extended brain network beyond ...
To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both ... more To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both affective responses and underlying brain activity. Here, we investigated emotions induced by music using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a data-driven approach based on intersubject correlations (ISC). This method allowed us to identify moments in the music that produced similar brain activity (i.e. synchrony) among listeners under relatively natural listening conditions. Continuous ratings of subjective pleasantness and arousal elicited by the music were also obtained for the music outside of the scanner. Our results reveal synchronous activations in left amygdala, left insula and right caudate nucleus that were associated with higher arousal, whereas positive valence ratings correlated with decreases in amygdala and caudate activity. Additional analyses showed that synchronous amygdala responses were driven by energy-related features in the music such as root mean square and dissonance, while synchrony in insula was additionally sensitive to acoustic event density. Intersubject synchrony also occurred in the left nucleus accumbens, a region critically implicated in reward processing. Our study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of an approach based on ISC to explore the temporal dynamics of music perception and emotion in naturalistic conditions.
Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investi... more Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investigated in neuroscience. Here, we used functional neuroimaging with parametric analyses based on the intensity of felt emotions to explore a wider spectrum of affective responses reported during music listening. Positive emotions correlated with activation of left striatum and insula when higharousing (Wonder, Joy) but right striatum and orbitofrontal cortex when low-arousing (Nostalgia, Tenderness). Irrespective of their positive/negative valence, high-arousal emotions (Tension, Power, and Joy) also correlated with activations in sensory and motor areas, whereas low-arousal categories (Peacefulness, Nostalgia, and Sadness) selectively engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The right parahippocampal cortex activated in all but positive high-arousal conditions. Results also suggested some blends between activation patterns associated with different classes of emotions, particularly for feelings of Wonder or Transcendence. These data reveal a differentiated recruitment across emotions of networks involved in reward, memory, self-reflective, and sensorimotor processes, which may account for the unique richness of musical emotions.
Background The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) recently revised it... more Background The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) recently revised its definition and diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia, placing muscle strength at the forefront. The pathogenesis of dynapenia (or low muscle strength) is still not fully understood, but there is emerging evidence that central neural factors constitute critical determinants. Methods Our cross-sectional study included 59 community-dwelling older women (mean age 73.1 ± 4.9 years). Participants underwent detailed skeletal muscle assessments for muscle strength defined by handgrip strength and chair rise time measurements using the recently published EWGSOP2 cut-off points. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was assessed during the performance of a cognitive dual-task paradigm, consisting of a baseline, two single-tasks (motor and arithmetic) and one dual-task (motor and arithmetic combined). Results Forty-seven percent (28/59) of participants were classified as dynapenic. fMRI resul...
Mode and tempo are known to influence affective experiences during music listening. While mode (m... more Mode and tempo are known to influence affective experiences during music listening. While mode (major/minor) is associated with emotional valence (positive/negative), tempo (slow/fast) is associated with emotional arousal (calm/excited). Heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) are also thought to adapt (entrain) to the tempo, leading to emotion elicitation via afferent feedback mechanisms. Here, we tested the influence of mode, tempo, and entrainment on affective experiences by recording HR, RR, and self-reported subjective entrainment and affect measures while participants ( N = 20) listened to major and minor chords embedded in slow and fast isochronous, metrical, and random sequences. Though there was no effect of tempo on HR or RR, both were faster during major and metrically random chord sequences, respectively. Slower HR positively predicted visceral entrainment (VE) ratings, the extent to which one feels one’s internal rhythms changing, and fast tempo positively predicted m...
One especially important feature of metrical music is that it contains periodicities that listene... more One especially important feature of metrical music is that it contains periodicities that listeners' bodily rhythms can adapt to. Recent psychological frameworks have introduced the notion of rhythmic entrainment, among other mechanisms, as an emotion induction principle. In this review paper, we discuss rhythmic entrainment as an affect induction mechanism by differentiating four levels of entrainment in humans-perceptual, autonomic physiological, motor, and social-all of which could contribute to a subjective feeling component. We review the theoretical and empirical literature on rhythmic entrainment to music that supports the existence of these different levels of entrainment by describing the phenomena and characterizing the associated underlying brain processes. The goal of this review is to present the theoretical implications and empirical findings about rhythmic entrainment as an important principle at the basis of affect induction via music, since it rests upon the temporal dimension of music, which is a specificity of music as an affective stimulus.
Whispering is a unique expression mode that is specific to auditory communication. Individuals sw... more Whispering is a unique expression mode that is specific to auditory communication. Individuals switch their vocalization mode to whispering especially when affected by inner emotions in certain social contexts, such as in intimate relationships or intimidating social interactions. Although this context-dependent whispering is adaptive, whispered voices are acoustically far less rich than phonated voices and thus impose higher hearing and neural auditory decoding demands for recognizing their socio-affective value by listeners. The neural dynamics underlying this recognition especially from whispered voices are largely unknown. Here we show that whispered voices in humans are considerably impoverished as quantified by an entropy measure of spectral acoustic information, and this missing information needs large-scale neural compensation in terms of auditory and cognitive processing. Notably, recognizing the socio-affective information from voices was slightly more difficult from whisp...
To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both ... more To study emotional reactions to music, it is important to consider the temporal dynamics of both affective responses and underlying brain activity. Here we investigated emotions induced by music using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a data-driven approach based on inter-subject correlations (ISC). This method allowed us to identify moments in the music that produced similar brain activity (i.e. synchrony) among listeners under relatively natural listening conditions. Continuous ratings of subjective pleasantness and arousal elicited by the music were also obtained for the music outside of the scanner. Our results reveal synchronous activations in left amygdala, left insula, and right caudate nucleus that were associated with higher arousal, whereas positive valence ratings correlated with decreases in amygdala and caudate activity. Additional analyses showed that synchronous amygdala responses were driven by energy-related features in the music such as rms and dissonance, while synchrony in insula was additionally sensitive to acoustic event density. Inter-subject synchrony also occurred in the left nucleus accumbens, a region critically implicated in reward processing. Our study demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of an approach based on ISC to explore the temporal dynamics of music perception and emotion in naturalistic conditions.
Rhythmic entrainment is an important component of emotion induction by music, but brain circuits ... more Rhythmic entrainment is an important component of emotion induction by music, but brain circuits recruited during spontaneous entrainment of attention by music and the influence of the subjective emotional feelings evoked by music remain still largely unresolved. In this study we used fMRI to test whether the metric structure of music entrains brain activity and how music pleasantness influences such entrainment. Participants listened to piano music while performing a speeded visuomotor detection task in which targets appeared time-locked to either strong or weak beats. Each musical piece was presented in both a consonant/pleasant and dissonant/unpleasant version. Consonant music facilitated target detection and targets presented synchronously with strong beats were detected faster. FMRI showed increased activation of bilateral caudate nucleus when responding on strong beats, whereas consonance enhanced activity in attentional networks. Meter and consonance selectively interacted in the caudate nucleus, with greater meter effects during dissonant than consonant music. These results reveal that the basal ganglia, involved both in emotion and rhythm processing, critically contribute to rhythmic entrainment of subcortical brain circuits by music.
Producing and perceiving music engage a wide range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and emotional proc... more Producing and perceiving music engage a wide range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and emotional processes. Emotions are a central feature of the enjoyment of music, with a large variety of affective states consistently reported by people while listening to music. However, besides joy or sadness, music often elicits feelings of wonder, nostalgia, or tenderness, which do not correspond to emotion categories typically studied in neuroscience and whose neural substrates remain largely unknown. Here we review the similarities and differences in the neural substrates underlying these "complex" music-evoked emotions relative to other more "basic" emotional experiences. We suggest that these emotions emerge through a combination of activation in emotional and motivational brain systems (e.g., including reward pathways) that confer its valence to music, with activation in several other areas outside emotional systems, including motor, attention, or memory-related regions. We...
Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to decode th... more Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to decode the emotional value of sensory information. Recent neuroimaging studies, as well as lesion studies in patients, have shown that the amygdala is sensitive to emotions in voice and music. Similarly, the hippocampus, another part of the temporal limbic system (TLS), is responsive to vocal and musical emotions, but its specific roles in emotional processing from music and especially from voices have been largely neglected. Here we review recent research on vocal and musical emotions, and outline commonalities and differences in the neural processing of emotions in the TLS in terms of emotional valence, emotional intensity and arousal, as well as in terms of acoustic and structural features of voices and music. We summarize the findings in a neural framework including several subcortical and cortical functional pathways between the auditory system and the TLS. This framework proposes that some ...
Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by en... more Here we present two experiments investigating the implicit orienting of attention over time by entrainment to an auditory rhythmic stimulus. In the first experiment, participants carried out a detection and discrimination tasks with auditory and visual targets while listening to an isochronous, auditory sequence, which acted as the entraining stimulus. For the second experiment, we used musical extracts as entraining stimulus, and tested the resulting strength of entrainment with a visual discrimination task. Both experiments used reaction times as a dependent variable. By manipulating the appearance of targets across four selected metrical positions of the auditory entraining stimulus we were able to observe how entraining to a rhythm modulates behavioural responses. That our results were independent of modality gives a new insight into cross-modal interactions between auditory and visual modalities in the context of dynamic attending to auditory temporal structure.
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