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| Brain Tracks Emotional Transitions Through Music | | | Vijay Garg
New research reveals how the brain navigates emotional transitions, using music as a tool to map changing neural patterns. Scientists found that emotional responses in the brain depend heavily on the listener’s prior emotional state.
For instance, hearing a happy tune before a sad one changes the way the brain processes the sadness, compared to if tension came first. These findings open new possibilities for treating emotional rigidity in mood disorders by targeting how the brain shifts between emotional states.
Context Matters: Prior emotional states shape how the brain reacts to new emotions.
Music as a Tool: Researchers used composer-created music to trigger and track emotional transitions.
Therapeutic Potential: The findings may inform interventions for depression and mood disorders involving emotional rigidity.
How does the human brain track emotions and support transitions between these emotions?
In a new eNeuro paper, Matthew Sachs and colleagues, from Colombia University, used music and an advanced approach for assessing brain activity to shed light on the context dependence and fluctuating nature of emotions.
This shows a brain and musical notes.
These findings suggest that the relationship between neural activity and emotional responses may depend on the context of a person’s previous emotional state. Credit: Neuroscience News
The researchers collaborated with composers to create songs that evoked different emotions at separate time points. They then assessed the brain activity of study participants as they listened to these songs.
Sachs et al. discovered that changes in patterns of activity in brain areas that support sound processing and social cognition reflected transitions between different emotions triggered by music.
Notably, these changes in patterns of brain activity were influenced by the previous emotional state. For example, if someone listened to a joyful passage of music before listening to a sad passage, their brain responded differently to the sad passage than someone who previously listened to a tense musical passage.
The researchers also found that when the previous emotion was more similar to the new emotion triggered by music, the emotional transition in the brain occurred earlier in time.
These findings suggest that the relationship between neural activity and emotional responses may depend on the context of a person’s previous emotional state.
Expressing excitement about the therapeutic potential of this work, says Sachs, “We know that people who suffer from mood disorders or depression often demonstrate emotional rigidity, where they basically get stuck in an emotional state.
“This study suggests that maybe we could take someone with depression, for instance, and use the approach we developed to identify neural markers for the emotional rigidity that keeps them in a very negative state.”
Vijay Garg Retired Principal Educational columnist Eminent Educationist street kour Chand MHR Malout Punjab |
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