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      A Functional MRI Study of Happy and Sad Emotions in Music with and without Lyrics

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          Abstract

          Musical emotions, such as happiness and sadness, have been investigated using instrumental music devoid of linguistic content. However, pop and rock, the most common musical genres, utilize lyrics for conveying emotions. Using participants’ self-selected musical excerpts, we studied their behavior and brain responses to elucidate how lyrics interact with musical emotion processing, as reflected by emotion recognition and activation of limbic areas involved in affective experience. We extracted samples from subjects’ selections of sad and happy pieces and sorted them according to the presence of lyrics. Acoustic feature analysis showed that music with lyrics differed from music without lyrics in spectral centroid, a feature related to perceptual brightness, whereas sad music with lyrics did not diverge from happy music without lyrics, indicating the role of other factors in emotion classification. Behavioral ratings revealed that happy music without lyrics induced stronger positive emotions than happy music with lyrics. We also acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data while subjects performed affective tasks regarding the music. First, using ecological and acoustically variable stimuli, we broadened previous findings about the brain processing of musical emotions and of songs versus instrumental music. Additionally, contrasts between sad music with versus without lyrics recruited the parahippocampal gyrus, the amygdala, the claustrum, the putamen, the precentral gyrus, the medial and inferior frontal gyri (including Broca’s area), and the auditory cortex, while the reverse contrast produced no activations. Happy music without lyrics activated structures of the limbic system and the right pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, whereas auditory regions alone responded to happy music with lyrics. These findings point to the role of acoustic cues for the experience of happiness in music and to the importance of lyrics for sad musical emotions.

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          Most cited references55

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          Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions.

          In a series of [15O]PET experiments aimed at investigating the neural basis of emotion and feeling, 41 normal subjects recalled and re-experienced personal life episodes marked by sadness, happiness, anger or fear. We tested the hypothesis that the process of feeling emotions requires the participation of brain regions, such as the somatosensory cortices and the upper brainstem nuclei, that are involved in the mapping and/or regulation of internal organism states. Such areas were indeed engaged, underscoring the close relationship between emotion and homeostasis. The findings also lend support to the idea that the subjective process of feeling emotions is partly grounded in dynamic neural maps, which represent several aspects of the organism's continuously changing internal state.
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            Functional atlas of emotional faces processing: a voxel-based meta-analysis of 105 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.

            Most of our social interactions involve perception of emotional information from the faces of other people. Furthermore, such emotional processes are thought to be aberrant in a range of clinical disorders, including psychosis and depression. However, the exact neurofunctional maps underlying emotional facial processing are not well defined. Two independent researchers conducted separate comprehensive PubMed (1990 to May 2008) searches to find all functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using a variant of the emotional faces paradigm in healthy participants. The search terms were: "fMRI AND happy faces," "fMRI AND sad faces," "fMRI AND fearful faces," "fMRI AND angry faces," "fMRI AND disgusted faces" and "fMRI AND neutral faces." We extracted spatial coordinates and inserted them in an electronic database. We performed activation likelihood estimation analysis for voxel-based meta-analyses. Of the originally identified studies, 105 met our inclusion criteria. The overall database consisted of 1785 brain coordinates that yielded an overall sample of 1600 healthy participants. Quantitative voxel-based meta-analysis of brain activation provided neurofunctional maps for 1) main effect of human faces; 2) main effect of emotional valence; and 3) modulatory effect of age, sex, explicit versus implicit processing and magnetic field strength. Processing of emotional faces was associated with increased activation in a number of visual, limbic, temporoparietal and prefrontal areas; the putamen; and the cerebellum. Happy, fearful and sad faces specifically activated the amygdala, whereas angry or disgusted faces had no effect on this brain region. Furthermore, amygdala sensitivity was greater for fearful than for happy or sad faces. Insular activation was selectively reported during processing of disgusted and angry faces. However, insular sensitivity was greater for disgusted than for angry faces. Conversely, neural response in the visual cortex and cerebellum was observable across all emotional conditions. Although the activation likelihood estimation approach is currently one of the most powerful and reliable meta-analytical methods in neuroimaging research, it is insensitive to effect sizes. Our study has detailed neurofunctional maps to use as normative references in future fMRI studies of emotional facial processing in psychiatric populations. We found selective differences between neural networks underlying the basic emotions in limbic and insular brain regions.
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              Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code?

              Many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions. but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. This review of 104 studies of vocal expression and 41 studies of music performance reveals similarities between the 2 channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. The patterns are generally consistent with K. R. Scherer's (1986) theoretical predictions. The results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. Discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychology
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Research Foundation
                1664-1078
                01 December 2011
                2011
                : 2
                : 308
                Affiliations
                [1] 1simpleCognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland
                [2] 2simpleDepartment of Music, Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research, University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland
                [3] 3simpleExperimental Psychology Unit, Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg Hamburg, Germany
                [4] 4simpleInstitute of Psychology I, University of Leipzig Germany
                [5] 5simpleAdvanced Magnetic Imaging Centre, Aalto University Espoo, Finland
                Author notes

                Edited by: Claude Alain, Rotman Research Institute, Canada

                Reviewed by: Patricia E. G. Bestelmeyer, University of Glasgow, UK; Bradley Russell Buchsbaum, Rotman Research Institute, Canada

                *Correspondence: Elvira Brattico, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, 00014 Helsinki, Finland. e-mail: elvira.brattico@ 123456helsinki.fi

                This article was submitted to Frontiers in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, a specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00308
                3227856
                22144968
                614b0907-3d43-483f-92ff-7a718c7162b2
                Copyright © 2011 Brattico, Alluri, Bogert, Jacobsen, Vartiainen, Nieminen and Tervaniemi.

                This is an open-access article subject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with.

                History
                : 20 April 2011
                : 13 October 2011
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 2, Equations: 0, References: 84, Pages: 16, Words: 13027
                Categories
                Psychology
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                music,language,emotion,fmri,limbic system,acoustic feature
                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                music, language, emotion, fmri, limbic system, acoustic feature

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