title: It's Sad but I Like It: The Neural Dissociation Between Musical Emotions and Liking in Experts and Laypersons.
abstract: Emotion-related areas of the brain, such as the medial frontal cortices, amygdala, and striatum, are activated during listening to sad or happy music as well as during listening to pleasurable music. Indeed, in music, like in other arts, sad and happy emotions might co-exist and be distinct from emotions of pleasure or enjoyment. Here we aimed at discerning the neural correlates of sadness or happiness in music as opposed those related to musical enjoyment. We further investigated whether musical expertise modulates the neural activity during affective listening of music. To these aims, 13 musicians and 16 non-musicians brought to the lab their most liked and disliked musical pieces with a happy and sad connotation. Based on a listening test, we selected the most representative 18 sec excerpts of the emotions of interest for each individual participant. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings were obtained while subjects listened to and rated the excerpts. The cortico-thalamo-striatal reward circuit and motor areas were more active during liked than disliked music, whereas only the auditory cortex and the right amygdala were more active for disliked over liked music. These results discern the brain structures responsible for the perception of sad and happy emotions in music from those related to musical enjoyment. We also obtained novel evidence for functional differences in the limbic system associated with musical expertise, by showing enhanced liking-related activity in fronto-insular and cingulate areas in musicians.
authors.affiliation: Center for Music in the Brain (MIB), Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg (RAMA)Aarhus, Denmark; Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of HelsinkiHelsinki, Finland; Advanced Magnetic Imaging Centre, Aalto UniversityEspoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Elvira
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Brattico
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Brigitte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bogert
authors.affiliation: Department of Music, University of JyväskyläJyväskylä, Finland; Neuroscience of Emotion and Affective Dynamics Lab, University of GeneveGeneve, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Vinoo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Alluri
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of HelsinkiHelsinki, Finland; Cicero Learning, University of HelsinkiHelsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Mari
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tervaniemi
authors.affiliation: Department of Music, Durham University Durham, UK.
authors.forename: Tuomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Eerola
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology Unit, Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jacobsen
keywords: aesthetics; emotion perception; fMRI; liking; limbic system; music; salience network