[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions

Nature Neuroscience volume 2, pages 382–387 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Neural correlates of the often-powerful emotional responses to music are poorly understood. Here we used positron emission tomography to examine cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes related to affective responses to music. Ten volunteers were scanned while listening to six versions of a novel musical passage varying systematically in degree of dissonance. Reciprocal CBF covariations were observed in several distinct paralimbic and neocortical regions as a function of dissonance and of perceived pleasantness/unpleasantness. The findings suggest that music may recruit neural mechanisms similar to those previously associated with pleasant/unpleasant emotional states, but different from those underlying other components of music perception, and other emotions such as fear.

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Examples of music stimuli and average subject ratings of unpleasant versus pleasant and happy versus sad for each version.
Figure 2: Cortical regions demonstrating significant rCBF correlations with dissonance level.
Figure 3: Cortical regions demonstrating significant rCBF correlations with ratings of increasing unpleasantness and increasing pleasantness.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Davis, W. B. & Thaut, M. H. The influence of preferred relaxing music on measures of state anxiety, relaxation, and physiological responses. J. Music Ther. 26, 168– 187 (1989).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Krumhansl, C. L. An exploratory study of musical emotions and psychophysiology. Can. J. Exp. Psychol. 51, 336–352 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Krumhansl, C. L. Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch; Oxford Psychology Series No. 17 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Milner, B. A. in Interhemispheric Relations and Cerebral Dominance (ed. V. Mountcastle) 177–195 (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1962).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Zatorre, R. J. Pitch perception of complex tones and human temporal-lobe function. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 566–572 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Zatorre, R. J. & Samson, S. Role of the right temporal neocortex in retention of pitch in auditory short-term memory. Brain 114, 2403–2417 (1991).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Zatorre, R. J., Evans, A. C., Meyer, E. & Gjedde, A. Lateralization of phonetic and pitch processing in speech perception. Science 256, 846–849 (1992).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Binder, J. R. et al. Human brain language areas identified by functional MRI. J. Neurosci. 17, 353–362 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Zatorre, R. J., Evans, A. C. & Meyer, E. Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory for pitch. J. Neurosci. 14, 1908– 1919 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Peretz, I., Gagnon, L. & Bouchard, B. Music and emotion: perceptual determinants, immediacy and isolation after brain damage. Cognition 68, 111–141 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Goldstein, A. Thrills in response to music and other stimuli. Physiol. Psychol. 8, 126–129 (1980).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Dowling, W. J. & Harwood, D. L. Music Cognition 62–89; 202–224 (Academic, Orlando, Florida, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Sloboda, J. A. Music structure and emotional response: some empirical findings. Psychol. Music 19, 110–120 (1991).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Robazza, C., Macaluso, C. & D'Urso, V. Emotional reactions to music by gender, age, and expertise. Percept. Mot. Skills 79, 939– 944 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Talairach, J. & Tournoux, P. Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain (Thieme, New York, 1988).

    Google Scholar 

  16. Petrides, M. & Pandya, D. N. Comparative architectonic analysis of the human and the macaque frontal cortex. Handbook Neuropsychol. 9, 17–58 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Zola-Morgan, S., Squire, L. R., Amaral, D. G. & Suzuki, W. A. Lesions of perirhinal and parahippocampal cortex that spare the amygdala and hippocampal formation produce severe memory impairment. J. Neurosci. 9, 4355–4370 (1989).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Bunsey, M. & Eichenbaum, H. Critical role of the parahippocampal region for paired-associate learning in rats. Behav. Neurosci. 107, 740–747 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Aguirre, G. K., Detre, J. A., Alsop, D. C. & D'Esposito, M. The parahippocampus subserves topographical learning in man. Cereb. Cortex 6, 823–829 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Stefanacci, L., Suzuki, W. A. & Amaral, D. G. Organization of connections between the amygdaloid complex and the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices in macaque monkeys. J. Comp. Neurol. 375, 552– 582 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Lane, R. D. et al. Neuroanatomical correlates of pleasant and unpleasant emotion. Neuropsychologia 35, 1437– 1444 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Berthoz, A., Parietal and hippocampal contribution to topokinetic and topographic memory. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 352, 1437– 1448 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Le, T. H., Pardo, J. V. & Hu, X. 4T-fMRI study of nonspatial shifting of selective attention: cerebellar and parietal contributions. J. Neurophysiol. 79, 1535–1548 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. LeDoux, J. E. Emotional memory systems in the brain. Behav. Brain Res. 58, 69–79 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Wheeler, R. E., Davidson, R. J. & Tomarken, A. J. Frontal brain asymmetry and emotional reactivity: a biological substrate of affective style. Psychophysiology 30, 82–89 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J., Wade, D. & McGrath, J. Emotion-related learning in patients with social and emotional changes associated with frontal lobe damage. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 57, 1518–1524 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. George, M. S. et al. Brain activity during transient sadness and happiness in healthy women. Am. J. Psychiatry 152, 341–351 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Bechara, A., Tranel, D., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. R. Failure to respond autonomically to anticipated future outcomes following damage to prefrontal cortex. Cereb. Cortex 6, 215– 25 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Damasio, A. R., The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 351, 1413–1420 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Dias, R., Robbins, T. W. & Roberts A. C. Dissociation in prefrontal cortex of affective and attentional shifts Nature 380, 69– 72 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Hornak, J., Rolls, E. T. & Wade, D. Face and voice expression identification in patients with emotional and behavioural changes following ventral frontal lobe damage. Neuropsychologia 34, 247– 261 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Drevets, W. C. et al. Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders. Nature 386, 824–827 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Lane, R. D., Reiman, E. M., Ahern, G. L., Schwartz, G. E. & Davidson, R. J. Neuroanatomical correlates of happiness, sadness, and disgust. Am. J. Psychiatry 154, 926–933 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Paradiso, S. et al. Emotional activation of limbic circuitry in elderly normal subjects in a PET study. Am. J. Psychiatry 154, 384–389 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Zald, D. H. & Pardo, J. V. Emotion, olfaction, and the human amygdala: amygdala activation during aversive olfactory stimulation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94, 4119– 4124 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Lane, R. D., Kivley, L. S., Du Bois, M. A., Shamasundara, P. & Schwartz, G. E. Levels of emotional awareness and the degree of right hemispheric dominance in the perception of facial emotion. Neuropsychologia 33, 25– 38 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Erhan, H., Borod, J. C., Tenke, C. E. & Bruder, G. E. Identification of emotion in a dichotic listening task: event-related brain potential and behavioral findings. Brain Cogn. 37, 286–307 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H. & Damasio, A. R. Fear and the human amygdala. J. Neurosci. 15, 5879– 5891 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Hugdahl, K. et al. Brain mechanisms in human classical conditioning: a PET blood flow study. Neuroreport 6, 1723– 1728 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  40. Morris, J. S. et al. A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions. Nature 383, 812–815 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  41. Rogan, M. T. & LeDoux, J. E. Emotion: systems, cells, synaptic plasticity. Cell 85, 469– 475 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  42. Raichle, M. E., Martin, W. R. W., Herscovitch, P., Mintun, M. A. & Markham, J. Brain blood flow measured with intravenous H2(15)O. II. Implementation and validation. J. Nucl. Med. 24, 790–798 (1983).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Fox, P. T. & Raichle, M. E. Stimulus rate dependence of regional cerebral blood flow in human striate cortex, demonstrated by positron emission tomography. J. Neurophysiol. 51, 1109– 1120 (1984).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  44. Collins, D. L., Neelin, P., Peters, T. M. & Evans, A. C. Automatic 3D intersubject registration of MR volumetric data in standardized Talairach space. J. Comput. Assist. Tomogr. 18, 192–205 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  45. Paus, T., Perry, D. W., Zatorre, R. J., Worsley, K. J. & Evans, A. C. Modulation of cerebral blood flow in the human auditory cortex during speech: role of motor-to-sensory discharges. Eur. J. Neurosci. 8, 2236– 2246 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  46. Sokal, R. R. & Rohlf, F. J. Biometry 2nd edn (Freeman, San Francisco, California, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  47. Worsley, K. J., Evans, A. C., Marrett, S. & Neelin, P. A three-dimensional statistical analysis for CBF activation studies in human brain. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 12, 900–918 (1992).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Christine Beckett for assistance in composing the music stimuli used in this experiment, and Pierre Ahad for his expertise in sound technology and computer programming. We also thank the technical staff of the McConnell Brain Imaging Unit and of the Medical Cyclotron Unit for their assistance, and Sylvain Milot for his technical expertise. This work was supported by Grants MT11541 and GR13972 from the Medical Research Council of Canada, by the Jeanne Timmins Costello Fellowship in Neuroscience awarded to A.J.B. by the Montreal Neurological Institute, and by the McDonnell-Pew Cognitive Neuroscience Program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuropsychology/Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, 3801 rue University, Montreal,, H3A 2B4, PQ, Canada

    Anne J. Blood, Robert J. Zatorre, Patrick Bermudez & Alan C. Evans

Authors
  1. Anne J. Blood
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Robert J. Zatorre
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Patrick Bermudez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Alan C. Evans
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anne J. Blood.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Blood, A., Zatorre, R., Bermudez, P. et al. Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions. Nat Neurosci 2, 382–387 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/7299

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/7299

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing