Amygdala and orbitofrontal engagement in breach and resolution of expectancy: A case study.

Abstract

Humans constantly predict their environment to facilitate mutual interaction. Predictions are connected with emotions as nonfatal penalties and rewards (for incorrect and correct expectancies, respectively) that result in negative and positive emotions. Music is an ideal stimulus to explore the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of prediction related emotions. Using the high spatial and temporal resolution of stereotactic depth electrodes, we identified activation patterns and examined their distribution in the bilateral Amygdalae and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). We used music excerpts with either (a) a deceptive cadence (i.e., an unexpected chord/breach) or (b) a tonic chord inserted instead of a deceptive cadence (regular chord/no breach). These events were followed by a chord progression leading to and ending on the tonic after a breach (c) or (d) on a tonic after no breach. We computed the differences of the analytic amplitudes in the theta band at these time-points (i.e., events a–d) by using t tests. We found a significant difference between the unexpected chord (a) and the expected chord (b) in the analytic amplitude of the theta band in the left amygdala. Further we found a difference between the 2 resolutions (c and d) in the analytic amplitude of the theta band within the OFC. In conclusion, our case study supports the notion that the amygdala and the OFC are important for emotional responses to musical expectancy breaches as well as of their resolution.

Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex, Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, and Hippocampus Differentially Represent the Event Saliency

“…This observation is akin to the representation of saliency in the nonhuman primates’ OFC, captured by HFA (Rich & Wallis, 2016, 2017). In humans, breaching expectations increases the OFC activity (Mikutta et al, 2015; Duarte, Henson, Knight, Emery, & Graham, 2009; Nobre et al, 1999). OFC also represents the saliency of anticipated events (Metereau & Dreher, 2015; Bechara, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1996).…”

The Role of the Baldwin Effect in the Evolution of Human Musicality

“…During the processing of musical syntax, people experience a set of subtle emotional reactions (emotional qualia) dependent on the position of a note in each syntactic context (Huron, 2006 ; Margulis, 2014 ). This observation is supported by the fact that the bilateral Amygdalae and the orbitofrontal cortex are differently activated during listening to music depending on the syntactic relations of musical sequences (Mikutta et al, 2015 ). In spite of the coexistence of an affective experience during listening to musical syntax, the emotional reaction to musical syntax is often suggested as the mere result of cognitive recognition of syntactic structure (Koelsch et al, 2008 ) rather than an integral part of this recognition.…”

“…This sensorimotor activity during listening to music leads in turns to emotional reactions (Sievers et al, 2013 ). Also, the recognition of pitch hierarchy causes measurable emotional reactions (Steinbeis et al, 2006 ; Koelsch et al, 2008 ; Mikutta et al, 2015 ), and perception of pitch changes (often described as “leaps” and “steps”) can lead to sensorimotor interpretation (Nikolsky, 2015 ). Since emotion is an evolutionarily old motivational mechanism (Toates, 1988 ), the function of which is to assess a potential danger or attractiveness of perceived stimuli (Panksepp, 1998 ), the tight connection between musical structure and emotions suggests the biological importance of this human specific interpretation of sound in terms of pitch and metric hierarchy.…”

Pitch Syntax Violations Are Linked to Greater Skin Conductance Changes, Relative to Timbral Violations – The Predictive Role of the Reward System in Perspective of Cortico–subcortical Loops

“…In fact, a number of studies indicate that the perception of a violated tonal structure leads to measurable somatic reactions such as changes of skin conductance ( Steinbeis et al, 2006 ; Koelsch et al, 2008b ). There are also studies that show the modulation in the activity of the amygdala ( Koelsch et al, 2008a ; Mikutta et al, 2015 ), the orbitofrontal cortex ( Tillmann et al, 2003 ; Koelsch et al, 2005 ; Mikutta et al, 2015 ), the inferior frontal gyrus, the orbital frontolateral cortex, the anterior insula, the ventrolateral premotor cortex, the anterior and posterior areas of the superior temporal gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus, the supramarginal gyrus ( Koelsch et al, 2005 ), the inferior frontal cortex ( Tillmann et al, 2003 , 2006 ), the parahippocampal gyrus and the cingulate cortex ( Omigie et al, 2015 ), depending on the expectedness of musical pitch structure. Information processed by various cortico–subcortical loops partly overlap in the striatum where it is exchanged between particular circuits ( Figure 1 ).…”