Mats B. Küssner

The roles of superficial amygdala and auditory cortex in music-evoked fear and joy

This study investigates neural correlates of music-evoked fear and joy with fMRI. Studies on neural correlates of music-evoked fear are scant, and there are only a few studies on neural correlates of joy in general. Eighteen individuals listened to excerpts of fear-evoking, joy-evoking, as well as neutral music and rated their own emotional state in terms of valence, arousal, fear, and joy. Results show that BOLD signal intensity increased during joy, and decreased during fear (compared to the neutral condition) in bilateral auditory cortex (AC) and bilateral superficial amygdala (SF). In the right primary somatosensory cortex (area 3b) BOLD signals increased during exposure to fear-evoking music. While emotion-specific activity in AC increased with increasing duration of each trial, SF responded phasically in the beginning of the stimulus, and then SF activity declined. Psychophysiological Interaction (PPI) analysis revealed extensive emotion-specific functional connectivity of AC with insula, cingulate cortex, as well as with visual, and parietal attentional structures. These findings show that the auditory cortex functions as a central hub of an affective-attentional network that is more extensive than previously believed. PPI analyses also showed functional connectivity of SF with AC during the joy condition, taken to reflect that SF is sensitive to social signals with positive valence. During fear music, SF showed functional connectivity with visual cortex and area 7 of the superior parietal lobule, taken to reflect increased visual alertness and an involuntary shift of attention during the perception of auditory signals of danger.

Investigating the influence of musical training on cross-modal correspondences and sensorimotor skills in a real-time drawing paradigm

Previous research comparing musically trained and untrained individuals has yielded valuable insights into music cognition and behaviour. Here, we explore two aspects of musical engagement previously studied separately, auditory-visual correspondences and sensorimotor skills, in a novel real-time drawing paradigm. To that end, musically trained and untrained participants were presented with 18 short sequences of pure tones varying in pitch, loudness and tempo, as well as two short musical excerpts. Using an electronic graphics tablet, participants were asked to represent the sound stimuli visually by drawing along with them while they were played. Results revealed that the majority of participants represented pitch with height (higher on the tablet referring to higher pitches), and loudness with the thickness of the line (thicker line for louder sounds). However, musically untrained participants showed a greater diversity of representation strategies and tended to neglect pitch information if unchanged over time. Investigating the performance accuracy in a subgroup of participants revealed that, while pitch-height correspondences were generally represented more accurately than loudness–thickness correspondences, musically trained participants’ representations of pitch and loudness were more accurate. Results are discussed in terms of cross-modal correspondences, the perception of time, and sensorimotor skills.

Musicians are more consistent: Gestural cross-modal mappings of pitch, loudness and tempo in real-time

Cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli reveal valuable insights into how humans make sense of sound and music. Whereas researchers have investigated cross-modal mappings of sound features varied in isolation within paradigms such as speeded classification and forced-choice matching tasks, investigations of representations of concurrently varied sound features (e.g., pitch, loudness and tempo) with overt gestures—accounting for the intrinsic link between movement and sound—are scant. To explore the role of bodily gestures in cross-modal mappings of auditory stimuli we asked 64 musically trained and untrained participants to represent pure tones—continually sounding and concurrently varied in pitch, loudness and tempo—with gestures while the sound stimuli were played. We hypothesized musical training to lead to more consistent mappings between pitch and height, loudness and distance/height, and tempo and speed of hand movement and muscular energy. Our results corroborate previously reported pitch vs. height (higher pitch leading to higher elevation in space) and tempo vs. speed (increasing tempo leading to increasing speed of hand movement) associations, but also reveal novel findings pertaining to musical training which influenced consistency of pitch mappings, annulling a commonly observed bias for convex (i.e., rising–falling) pitch contours. Moreover, we reveal effects of interactions between musical parameters on cross-modal mappings (e.g., pitch and loudness on speed of hand movement), highlighting the importance of studying auditory stimuli concurrently varied in different musical parameters. Results are discussed in light of cross-modal cognition, with particular emphasis on studies within (embodied) music cognition. Implications for theoretical refinements and potential clinical applications are provided.