title: Interaction between musical emotion and facial expression as measured by event-related potentials.
abstract: We examined the integrative process between emotional facial expressions and musical excerpts by using an affective priming paradigm. Happy or sad musical stimuli were presented after happy or sad facial images during electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. We asked participants to judge the affective congruency of the presented face-music pairs. The congruency of emotionally congruent pairs was judged more rapidly than that of incongruent pairs. In addition, the EEG data showed that incongruent musical targets elicited a larger N400 component than congruent pairs. Furthermore, these effects occurred in nonmusicians as well as musicians. In sum, emotional integrative processing of face-music pairs was facilitated in congruent music targets and inhibited in incongruent music targets; this process was not significantly modulated by individual musical experience. This is the first study on musical stimuli primed by facial expressions to demonstrate that the N400 component reflects the affective priming effect.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1Komaba, Meguro-Ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan. kkamiyama@brain.riken.jp
authors.forename: Keiko S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Kamiyama
authors.forename: Dilshat
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Abla
authors.forename: Koichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Iwanaga
authors.forename: Kazuo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Okanoya
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult