Submission Date

7-18-2025

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Neuroscience

Second Department

Music

Faculty Mentor

Joel Bish

Second Faculty Mentor

Rosa Abrahams

Comments

Presented during the 27th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 18, 2025 at Ursinus College.

Project Description

The benefits of listening to music are vast and well documented in the music cognition literature. Of these benefits, music's ability to induce and regulate emotions is of particular interest to scientists investigating the mechanisms underlying emotion processing. Psychological constructionists have suggested that specific brain regions are specialized for specific emotional processes. From this perspective, the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC), and the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) have been implicated in evaluating environmental sensory information and internal emotions states respectively. This study uses music to induce emotion, investigating two main questions: 1) If the LOFC and OFC participate in evaluating emotion conveyed by music and 2) How various musical elements influence the perception of emotion in music. Here, emotion is defined as the momentary sensation of valance and arousal evoked in response to a stimulus, or core affect. Functional Near-Infrared (fNIR) imaging was used to measure changes in oxygenation in the LOFC and OFC while participants listened to 12 short musical excerpts. While listening, changes in pupil dilation were measured as an indicator of autonomic arousal. Participants used Russell’s 1980 Circumplex Model of Affect and the 5-point Self-Assessment Manikin to judge the emotional content of each excerpt. Advancing our understanding of these mechanisms benefits both healthy individuals, as well as those living with disorders impairing emotion perception and regulation. Furthermore, advancing our understanding of how music can be used to influence these processes has implications to refine how we interact with music recreationally and in clinical practices.

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