Neuroscience of Music: Linking Cognition and Emotion

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Krumhansl will conduct a year long investigation of the hypothesis that dynamic changes in emotions experienced while listening to music are produced by the interplay of expectations and the sound events. Recent research has documented new interdependencies between cognition and emotion. Music is an outstanding model to explore such interdependencies because people report that their primary motivation for listening to music is its emotional effects, and these effects are described as having great personal and social significance. Likewise, psychological research on music emphasizes the role of cognition in the experience of music, specifically, on how it is perceived, organized, remembered, and performed. Many issues are still poorly understood such as: How is it that patterns of sound in time can have such a profound effect? What is it in the music that causes the emotion? Are musical emotions like other emotions? How do the responses depend on the listeners' previous musical experience and training? Krumhansl's project will explore these questions by way of examining the neural substrates underlying the perception of music. One study will uses both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrical potential recorded at the scalp (ERPs) on excerpts that conform to varying degrees to statistical predictability, principles of perceptual organization, and conventions of tonal-harmonic music. A second study uses fMRI to investigate possible dissociations between sources of expectation, in particular, dissonance, tonality, meter, and temporal order. A third study uses fMRI on the brain of volunteers listening to musical excerpts that have been found in previous research to produce distinctive patterns of psychophysiological changes associated with the basic emotions of sad, happy, fearful. A last study uses ERPs to look for brain correlates of descriptions of musical structure based on formal music theory. This research promises to yield insights into the neural structures involved in music at both cognitive and affective levels, and the links between them. It will also broaden current conceptions and methodologies in the study of emotion. Greater knowledge about the effect of music on emotion and the nature of music may lead to novel practical applications.