title: Processing of emotional faces in congenital amusia: An emotional music priming event-related potential study.
abstract: Congenital amusia is characterized by lifelong impairments in music perception and processing. It is unclear whether pitch detection deficits impact amusic individuals' perception of musical emotion. In the current work, 19 amusics and 21 healthy controls were subjected to electroencephalography (EEG) while being exposed to music excerpts and emotional faces. We assessed each individual's ability to discriminate positive- and negative-valenced emotional faces and analyzed electrophysiological indices, in the form of event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded at 32 sites, following exposure to emotionally positive or negative music excerpts. We observed smaller N2 amplitudes in response to facial expressions in the amusia group than in the control group, suggesting that amusics were less affected by the musical stimuli. The late-positive component (LPC) in amusics was similar to that in controls. Our results suggest that the neurocognitive deficit characteristic of congenital amusia is fundamentally an impairment in musical information processing rather than an impairment in emotional processing.
authors.affiliation: Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhishuai
authors.affiliation: Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
authors.forename: Liu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.affiliation: Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China; Medical Psychological Institute of Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Wu
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Daxing
authors.affiliation: Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China.
authors.forename: Zhang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Pin
authors.affiliation: Medical Psychological Center, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410011, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xuejing
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010898:Pitch Perception; D055815:Young Adult