Effects of Canon chord progression on brain activity and motivation are dependent on subjective feelings, not the chord progression per se

Abstract

Abstract:A number of studies have indicated that relaxing and pleasant melodies are useful for the treatment of patients with psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, and dementia. However, few studies have investigated what constitutive elements of the music had an effect on brain activity. As Canon chord progression is one of critical elements for pleasant melodies, we sought to examine the effects of Canon chord progression and pitch-shifted Canon chord progression on brain activity using performance on the auditory oddball task during event-related potentials (ERPs) in 30 healthy subjects. Unexpectedly, we found no differences in ERP components between subjects listening to Canon chord progression (n=15) or pitchshifted Canon chord progression (n=15). Next, we divided participants into two groups: those who found the melody pleasant (n=17) and those who did not (n=13), for both Canon chord progression and pitch-shifted Canon chord progression. The average of P300 amplitude was higher at Fz in subjects found the music pleasant versus those finding it unpleasant. Moreover, subjects who found it pleasant exhibited higher motivation scores than those who felt it was unpleasant, whereas listening to Canon chord progression did not matter. These findings suggest that the effects of Canon chord progression on brain activity and motivation depend on subjective feelings, not the chord progression per se.

Event-related brain potential markers of visual and auditory perception: A useful tool for brain computer interface systems

“…Music elicited a greater frontocentral P300 response (400-500 ms) than emotional vocalizations, while words elicited a larger centroparietal N400 amplitude than music. These findings is consistent with the previous literature reporting larger P300 amplitudes over frontal areas in response to pleasant vs. unpleasant music (Kayashima et al, 2017).…”

Introducing Rhythmic Sinusoidal Amplitude-Modulated Auditory Stimuli with Multiple Message Frequency Coding for Fatigue Reduction in Normal Subjects: An EEG Study

“…Active g.LADYbird electrodes were placed on Fz, Cz, T7 and T8. The reason for selecting Fz was that it is shown that Fz has the highest average amplitude of responses in subjects to whom a music is pleasant (Kayashima et al, 2017). Three other channels were consistently used in a number of previous ASSR studies (Lopez et al, 2009;Higashi et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2011;Heo et al, 2017;Shamsi et al, 2017).…”