The music of your emotions: neural substrates involved in detection of emotional correspondence between auditory and visual music actions

Petrini, K., Crabbe, F., Sheridan, C. and Pollick, F.E. (2011) The music of your emotions: neural substrates involved in detection of emotional correspondence between auditory and visual music actions. PLoS ONE, 6(4), e19165. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019165)

Abstract

In humans, emotions from music serve important communicative roles. Despite a growing interest in the neural basis of music perception, action and emotion, the majority of previous studies in this area have focused on the auditory aspects of music performances. Here we investigate how the brain processes the emotions elicited by audiovisual music performances. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, and in Experiment 1 we defined the areas responding to audiovisual (musician's movements with music), visual (musician's movements only), and auditory emotional (music only) displays. Subsequently a region of interest analysis was performed to examine if any of the areas detected in Experiment 1 showed greater activation for emotionally mismatching performances (combining the musician's movements with mismatching emotional sound) than for emotionally matching music performances (combining the musician's movements with matching emotional sound) as presented in Experiment 2 to the same participants. The insula and the left thalamus were found to respond consistently to visual, auditory and audiovisual emotional information and to have increased activation for emotionally mismatching displays in comparison with emotionally matching displays. In contrast, the right thalamus was found to respond to audiovisual emotional displays and to have similar activation for emotionally matching and mismatching displays. These results suggest that the insula and left thalamus have an active role in detecting emotional correspondence between auditory and visual information during music performances, whereas the right thalamus has a different role.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Pollick, Professor Frank and Crabbe, Mrs Frances
• Authors: Petrini, K., Crabbe, F., Sheridan, C., and Pollick, F.E.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience; College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology
• Journal Name: PLoS ONE
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN (Online): 1932-6203
• Published Online: 29 April 2011
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2011 The Authors
• First Published: First published in PLoS ONE 6(4):e19165
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
44988	1	Social interaction - a cognitive-neurosciences approach	Simon Garrod	Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/E020933/1	Cognitive Neuroimaging & Neuroengineering Technologies