Abstract-Brain activities to major and minor chords and to major and minor scales were measured by sparse scanning fMRI. Areas activated by major and minor chords and scales were examined. Some of them are known to be related to emotion, motivation, arousal or reward. In general, minor stimuli activated lager areas of brain regions than major stimuli. Interestingly, scale stimuli seemed not to have activated regions related to emotion processing so much of the chords stimuli.

Activated brain areas in response to major, minor, augmented and diminished chords as well as to major and minor harmonized scales were investigated by fMRI. The activated areas for the chord experiments included regions related to emotion processing. Results of the scale experimnts were less straightforward than those of the chord experiments. Possible relationship between the known functions of the areas activated by each category of stimuli and the behavioral (emotinal) effects of the category was discussed.