Via electrophysiological methods, early neural responses to musical chords have been, on one hand, associated with feature encoding, feature change discrimination, rule violation processing, and conscious updating of musical expectations. On the other hand, late neural responses have been related to affective evaluation of sounds. The chronometric succession of these neural processes and their underlying psychological mechanisms related to cognitive and affective aspects of music listening have thus far remained unexplored. Here, the neural correlates of affective and cognitive processing of musical chords were contrasted by means of the event-related potential (ERP) technique and behavioral ratings. Adult subjects (N 24) performed an emotion judgment (affective) task and a correctness judgment (cognitive) task while listening to chord sequences ending in various major and minor final chords, which were either correctly tuned or mistuned. Enhanced negative ERPs during cadence listening preceding the affective ratings, relative to the cognitive ratings, suggest different neural preparation for these tasks. Furthermore, negatively rated (sad or incorrect) cadence endings in both tasks elicited early negative ERPs and later positive ERPs. These positivities, peaking at 500 ms, differed in scalp distribution between sad and incorrect stimuli. The present findings suggest a neural chronometry of music listening in which feature encoding and sensory memory processes are followed at a medium latency by affective classification, after which an evaluative stage takes place. This study provides a first look at the chronometric succession of electrophysiological brain responses in relation to emotion judgments of musical pitch as opposed to nonaffective correctness judgments.

Affective versus cognitive responses to musical chords: An ERP and behavioral study

Brattico, Elvira
Supervision
2015-01-01

Abstract

Via electrophysiological methods, early neural responses to musical chords have been, on one hand, associated with feature encoding, feature change discrimination, rule violation processing, and conscious updating of musical expectations. On the other hand, late neural responses have been related to affective evaluation of sounds. The chronometric succession of these neural processes and their underlying psychological mechanisms related to cognitive and affective aspects of music listening have thus far remained unexplored. Here, the neural correlates of affective and cognitive processing of musical chords were contrasted by means of the event-related potential (ERP) technique and behavioral ratings. Adult subjects (N 24) performed an emotion judgment (affective) task and a correctness judgment (cognitive) task while listening to chord sequences ending in various major and minor final chords, which were either correctly tuned or mistuned. Enhanced negative ERPs during cadence listening preceding the affective ratings, relative to the cognitive ratings, suggest different neural preparation for these tasks. Furthermore, negatively rated (sad or incorrect) cadence endings in both tasks elicited early negative ERPs and later positive ERPs. These positivities, peaking at 500 ms, differed in scalp distribution between sad and incorrect stimuli. The present findings suggest a neural chronometry of music listening in which feature encoding and sensory memory processes are followed at a medium latency by affective classification, after which an evaluative stage takes place. This study provides a first look at the chronometric succession of electrophysiological brain responses in relation to emotion judgments of musical pitch as opposed to nonaffective correctness judgments.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11586/270446
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