Abstract We explored the role of lyrics and melodies in conveying emotions in songs. Participants rated the intensity of four types of emotions in instrumental music or the same music paired with lyrics. Melodies and lyrics conveyed the same intended emotion in Experiments 1 and 3 but were mismatched in Experiments 2 and 4. The major findings in Experiments 1 and 2 were that lyrics detracted from the emotion in happy and calm music (positive emotions), but enhanced the emotion in sad and angry music (negative emotions). In all cases, melodies of songs were more dominant than the lyrics in eliciting emotions. In addition, in Experiments 3 and 4, the emotion in the songs appeared to transfer, simply by association, to pictures of common objects arbitrarily paired with the songs. Copyright

Fifty-eight undergraduate students with low and high musicianship skills rated the degree to which 24 solo improvisations expressed the emotions of sad, angry, and scared. Eight musicians-two violinists, two trumpet players, two vocalists, and two timpanists-performed three short improvisations, each of which expressed one of the three targeted emotions. Accuracy scores were computed to assess the degree to which subjects rated improvi- sations as expressing the emotion intended by the musician in contrast to the other two emotions. The results indicated that the subjects were relatively accurate in assessing the emotional content of the improvisations. In addition, subjects with a higher level of musicianship skills demonstrated greater accuracy for only the trumpet improvisations. Finally, the subjects' accuracy depended not only on the instrument played, but the emotion expressed. For example, subjects were more accurate when identifying scared improvisations performed on a violin. The applied and theoretical implications of these results were discussed.

Musical emotions, such as happiness and sadness, have been investigated using instrumental music devoid of linguistic content. However, pop and rock, the most common musical genres, utilize lyrics for conveying emotions. Using participants self-selected musical excerpts, we studied their behavior and brain responses to elucidate how lyrics interact with musical emotion processing, as reflected by emotion recognition and activation of limbic areas involved in affective experience. We extracted samples from subjects selections of sad and happy pieces and sorted them according to the presence of lyrics. Acoustic feature analysis showed that music with lyrics differed from music without lyrics in spectral centroid, a feature related to perceptual brightness, whereas sad music with lyrics did not diverge from happy music without lyrics, indicating the role of other factors in emotion classification. Behavioral ratings revealed that happy music without lyrics induced stronger positive emotions than happy music with lyrics. We also acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data while subjects performed affective tasks regarding the music. First, using ecological and acoustically variable stimuli, we broadened previous findings about the brain processing of musical emotions and of songs versus instrumental music. Additionally, contrasts between sad music with versus without lyrics recruited the parahippocampal gyrus, the amygdala, the claustrum, the putamen, the precentral gyrus, the medial and inferior frontal gyri (including Broca area), and the auditory cortex, while the reverse contrast produced no activations. Happy music without lyrics activated structures of the limbic system and the right pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, whereas auditory regions alone responded to happy music with lyrics. These findings point to the role of acoustic cues for the experience of happiness in music and to the importance of lyrics for sad musical emotions.

The N400 is an endogenous event-related brain potential (ERP) that is sensitive to semantic processes during language comprehension. The general question we address in this paper is which aspects of the comprehension process are manifest in the N400. The focus is on the sensitivity of the N400 to the automatic process of lexical access, or to the controlled process of lexical integration. The former process is the reflex-like and effortless behavior of computing a form representation of the linguistic signal, and of mapping this representation onto corresponding entries in the mental lexicon. The latter process concerns the integration of a spoken or written word into a higher-order meaning representation of the context within which it occurs. ERPs and reaction times (RTs) were acquired to target words preceded by semantically related and unrelated prime words. The semantic relationship between a prime and its target has been shown to modulate the amplitude of the N400 to the target. This modulation can arise from lexical access processes, reflecting the automatic spread of activation between words related in meaning in the mental lexicon. Alternatively, the N400 effect can arise from lexical integration processes, reflecting the relative ease of meaning integration between the prime and the target. To assess the impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400, we compared the effect of masked and unmasked presentations of a prime on the N400 to a following target. Masking prevents perceptual identification, and as such it is claimed to rule out effects from controlled processes. It therefore enables a stringent test of the possible impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400. The RT study showed a significant semantic priming effect under both unmasked and masked presentations of the prime. The result for masked priming reflects the effect of automatic spreading of activation during the lexical access process. The ERP study showed a significant N400 effect for the unmasked presentation condition, but no such effect for the masked presentation condition. This indicates that the N400 is not a manifestation of lexical access processes, but reflects aspects of semantic integration processes.

Abstract The cognitive processing of concepts, that is, abstract general ideas, has been mostly studied with language. However, other domains, such as music, can also convey concepts. Koelsch et al. [Koelsch, S., Kasper, E., Sammler, D., Schulze, K., Gunter, T., & Friederici, A. D. Music, language and meaning: Brain signatures of semantic processing. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 302-307, 2004] showed that 10 sec of music can influence the semantic processing of words. However, the length of the musical excerpts did not allow the authors to study the effect of words on musical targets. In this study, we decided to replicate Koelsch et al. findings using 1-sec musical excerpts (Experiment 1). This allowed us to study the reverse influence, namely, of a linguistic context on conceptual processing of musical excerpts (Experiment 2). In both experiments, we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological responses while participants were presented 50 related and 50 unrelated pairs (context/target). Experiments 1 and 2 showed a larger N400 component of the event-related brain potentials to targets following a conceptually unrelated compared to a related context. The presence of an N400 effect with musical targets suggests that music may convey concepts. The relevance of these results for the comprehension of music as a structured set of conceptual units and for the domain specificity of the mechanisms underlying N400 effects are discussed.

This study examined the effects on attitude, mood, and recall of embedding a communication in different musical art forms. Subjects listened to four folk songs, each of which either had or did not have guitar accompaniment, and which were either sung or dramatically spoken. Results indicated greater positive emotional arousal and greater persuasion with the presence of guitar accompaniment. The sung-spoken variation had few effects. The results were interpreted as supporting a conclusion of Dabbs and Janis (1965) that a pleasant activity such as eating creates a momentary mood of compliance toward a communication's recommendations. The present study generalized Dabbs and Janis' conclusion to a stimulus situation involving instrumental music. An alternative interpretation that the music inhibited counterargument production was discussed and rejected. The implications of the study for a more general arousal-persuasion model were noted.

Abstract The phenomenon of affective priming has caught scientific interest for over 30 years, yet the nature of the affective priming effect remains elusive. This study investigated the underlying mechanism of cross-modal affective priming and the influence of affective incongruence in music and speech on negativities in the N400 time-window. In Experiment 1, participants judged the valence of affective targets (affective categorization). We found that music and speech targets were evaluated faster when preceded by affectively congruent visual word primes, and vice versa. This affective priming effect was accompanied by a significantly larger N400-like effect following incongruent targets. In this experiment, both spreading of activation and response competition could underlie the affective priming effect. In Experiment 2, participants categorized the same affective targets based on nonaffective characteristics. However, as prime valence was irrelevant to the response dimension, affective priming effects could no longer be attributable to response competition. In Experiment 2, affective priming effects were observed neither at the behavioral nor electrophysiological level. The results of this study indicate that both affective music and speech prosody can prime the processing of visual words with emotional connotations, and vice versa. Affective incongruence seems to be associated with N400-like effects during evaluative categorization. The present data further suggest a role of response competition during the affective categorization of music, prosody, and words with emotional connotations.

Objective:To extend the native Chinese Facial Affective Picture System to provide materials for further research on emotion.Methods:The experiments used convenience sampling.One hundred students from the acting and directing department of two art colleges in Beijing were selected as the expresser.And 100 students were recruited from two colleges in Beijing as the raters.Seven types of facial expression pictures including anger,disgust,fearful,sadness,surprised,happy and peaceful were collected from expressers.Then,the type was judged and the pictures were assessed with a 9-point scale by college student raters.The experiment 1 was to expand all emotional types of pictures on the basis of Chinese facial expression materials that produced by our group.One hundred students from the drama club of three colleges in Beijing were selected as the expresser.And each of 10 elderly and children expresser was selected from a community of Beijing.Then,another 100 students were recruited from two colleges in Beijing as the raters.Experiment 2 further expanded the number of negative pictures(such as anger,disgust,fear,sadness)and added some pictures of other age groups.Results:Totally 870 representative facial expression pictures of 7 emotion types were obtained with an identity rate and intensity point for each picture including 74 anger faces,47 disgust faces,64 fear faces,95 sadness faces,120 surprise faces,248 happiness faces and 222 neutral facial expressions.Conclusion:The present study has established the reliable Chinese Facial Affective Picture System.The facial expression pictures in our system are representative materials for emotion research in the future.It requires further study to improve the native facial expression system.

目的:扩展本土化的中国面孔表情图片系统以提供情绪研究的取材。方法:采用方便取样。从北京2所高等艺术院校的表演系、导演系选取100名学生,作为面孔表情表演者;从北京2所普通高等院校招募100名学生,作为面孔表情评分者。采集表演者的愤怒,厌恶,恐惧,悲伤,惊讶,高兴和平静7种面孔表情图片,再由评分者对图片进行情绪类别的判定和情绪强烈程度的9点量表评分,扩展各种情绪类型的图片数量。然后,从北京3所普通高校戏剧社社员中选取100名学生,从北京某社区选取老年人、儿童各10名,作为面孔表情表演者;另从北京2所普通高等院校招募100名学生,作为面孔表情评分者。进一步扩展负性图片的数量(如,愤怒,厌恶,恐惧,悲伤),并补充一些其他年龄段的图片。结果:得到具有代表性的7种情绪类型的面孔表情图片共870张,每张图片都有其对应的认同率和情绪强度评分,其中,愤怒74张,厌恶47张,恐惧64张,悲伤95张,惊讶120张,高兴248张,平静222张。结论:本研究初步建立了信度较高的中国人面孔表情图片系统,可作为以后情绪研究的选取材料,本系统有待进一步完善。

Salient sensory experiences often have a strong emotional tone, but the neuropsychological relations between perceptual characteristics of sensory objects and the affective information they convey remain poorly defined. Here we addressed the relationship between sound identity and emotional information using music. In two experiments, we investigated whether perception of emotions is influenced by altering the musical instrument on which the music is played, independently of other musical features. In the first experiment, 40 novel melodies each representing one of four emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, or anger) were each recorded on four different instruments (an electronic synthesizer, a piano, a violin, and a trumpet), controlling for melody, tempo, and loudness between instruments. Healthy participants (23 young adults aged 18-30 years, 24 older adults aged 58-75 years) were asked to select which emotion they thought each musical stimulus represented in a four-alternative forced-choice task. Using a generalized linear mixed model we found a significant interaction between instrument and emotion judgement with a similar pattern in young and older adults (p< .0001 for each age group). The effect was not attributable to musical expertise. In the second experiment using the same melodies and experimental design, the interaction between timbre and perceived emotion was replicated (p< .05) in another group of young adults for novel synthetic timbres designed to incorporate timbral cues to particular emotions. Our findings show that timbre (instrument identity) independently affects the perception of emotions in music after controlling for other acoustic, cognitive, and performance factors.

Abstract Previous studies examining event-related potentials and evaluative priming have been mixed; some find evidence that evaluative priming influences the N400, whereas others find evidence that it affects the late positive potential (LPP). Three experiments were conducted using either affective pictures (Experiments 1 and 2) or words (Experiment 3) in a sequential evaluative priming paradigm. In line with previous behavioral findings, participants responded slower to targets that were evaluatively incongruent with the preceding prime (e.g., negative preceded by positive) compared to evaluatively congruent targets (e.g., negative preceded by negative). In all three studies, the LPP was larger to evaluatively incongruent targets compared to evaluatively congruent ones, and there was no evidence that evaluative incongruity influenced the N400 component. Thus, the present results provide additional support for the notion that evaluative priming influences the LPP and not the N400. We discuss possible reasons for the inconsistent findings in prior research and the theoretical implications of the findings for both evaluative and semantic priming. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Gestures should play a role in second language comprehension, given their importance in conveying contextual information. In this study, the N400 and the LPC were evaluated in a task involving the observation of videos showing utterances accompanied by gestures. Students studying advanced (G-High participants) and basic German (G-Low participants) as a second language were investigated. The utterance–gesture congruence and metaphoric meaning of content were manipulated during the task. As in previous ERP reports with native speakers, metaphorical expressions were sensitive to gestures. In G-Low participants, no modulation in the 300–500 ms window was observed, and only a modest effect was observed for the 500–700 ms window. More subtle differences of verbal expression were not processed in this group. Consistent with previous reports of the same paradigm with native speakers, the N400 from G-High group discriminated both congruent and incongruent gestures as well as literal and metaphorical sentences. Our results suggest that semantic processing is robust in the learning of a second language, although the amplitude modulation and latency of ERPs might depend on the speaker's proficiency level.

This paper presents behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) correlates of emotional word processing during a lexical decision task (LDT). We showed that valence and origin (two distinct affective properties of stimuli) help to account for the ERP correlates of LDT. The origin of emotion is a factor derived from the emotion duality model. This model distinguishes between the automatic and controlled elicitation of emotional states. The subjects’ task was to discriminate words from pseudo-words. The stimulus words were carefully selected to differ with respect to valence and origin whilst being matched with respect to arousal, concreteness, length and frequency in natural language. Pseudo-words were matched to words with respect to length. The subjects were 32 individuals aged from 19 to 26 years who were invited to participate in an EEG study of lexical decision making. They evaluated a list of words and pseudo-words. We found that valence modulated the amplitude of the FN400 component (290–375 ms) at centro-frontal (Fz, Cz) region, whereas origin modulated the amplitude of the component in the LPC latency range (375–670 ms). The results indicate that the origin of stimuli should be taken into consideration while deliberating on the processing of emotional words.

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND MUSIC CAN BE explored only in the context of (a) the differences between them, and (b) those parallels that are also shared with other cognitive capacities. The two differ in many aspects of structure and function, and, with the exception of the metrical grid, all aspects they share appear to be instances of more general capacities.

ABSTRACT Certain emotional processes “bypass the will” and even awareness, whereas others arise due to the deliberative evaluation of objects, states, and events. It is important to differentiate between the automatic versus reflective origins of emotional processes, and sensory versus conceptual bases of diverse negative and positive emotions. A taxonomy of emotions based on different origins is presented. This taxonomy distinguishes between negative and positive automatic versus reflective emotions. The automatic emotions are connected with the (a) homeostatic and (b) hedonistic regulatory mechanisms. The reflective emotions—uniquely human—are described in reference to deliberative processes and appraisals based on two types of conceptual and verbalized evaluative standards: (a) ideal self-standards and (b) general, axiological standards of good and evil.

Age-related changes in semantic context effects were examined using late event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Auditory ERPs to semantically congruous and incongruous final words in spoken sentences were recorded in 16 children (aged 5鈥11 years) and 16 adults. Previous findings concerning age-related effects on N400 were replicated: the N400 effect was significantly larger in children than in adults. The main new finding was that a late positive component (LPC) following N400 and modulated by semantic context in adults was not found in children. Thus, the common generalization that semantic context effects decline with age holds only for ERP components occurring in the N400 time window or earlier. The cognitive function reflected by the semantic LPC we observed is not clear, but it seems to have a role different from that of the N400, although in adults the components often co-exist as an N400-LPC complex.

We examined the integrative process between emotional facial expressions and musical excerpts by using an affective priming paradigm. Happy or sad musical stimuli were presented after happy or sad facial images during electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. We asked participants to judge the affective congruency of the presented face-music pairs. The congruency of emotionally congruent pairs was judged more rapidly than that of incongruent pairs. In addition, the EEG data showed that incongruent musical targets elicited a larger N400 component than congruent pairs. Furthermore, these effects occurred in nonmusicians as well as musicians. In sum, emotional integrative processing of face-music pairs was facilitated in congruent music targets and inhibited in incongruent music targets; this process was not significantly modulated by individual musical experience. This is the first study on musical stimuli primed by facial expressions to demonstrate that the N400 component reflects the affective priming effect. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract Semantics is a key feature of language, but whether or not music can activate brain mechanisms related to the processing of semantic meaning is not known. We compared processing of semantic meaning in language and music, investigating the semantic priming effect as indexed by behavioral measures and by the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) measured by electroencephalography (EEG). Human subjects were presented visually with target words after hearing either a spoken sentence or a musical excerpt. Target words that were semantically unrelated to prime sentences elicited a larger N400 than did target words that were preceded by semantically related sentences. In addition, target words that were preceded by semantically unrelated musical primes showed a similar N400 effect, as compared to target words preceded by related musical primes. The N400 priming effect did not differ between language and music with respect to time course, strength or neural generators. Our results indicate that both music and language can prime the meaning of a word, and that music can, as language, determine physiological indices of semantic processing.

The physical energy that we refer to as a word, whether in isolation or embedded in sentences, takes its meaning from the knowledge stored in our brains through a lifetime of experience. Much empirical evidence indicates that, although this knowledge can be used fairly flexibly, it is functionally organized in emantic memory along a number of dimensions, including similarity and association. Here, we review recent findings using an electrophysiological brain component, the N400, that reveal the nature and timing of semantic memory use during language comprehension. These findings show that the organization of semantic memory has an inherent impact on sentence processing. The left hemisphere, in particular, seems to capitalize on the organization of semantic memory to pre-activate the meaning of forthcoming words, even if this strategy fails at times. In addition, these electrophysiological results support a view of memory in which world knowledge is distributed across multiple, plastic-yet-structured, largely modality-specific processing areas, and in which meaning is an emergent, temporally extended process, influenced by experience, context, and the nature of the brain itself.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects as they silently read 160 different seven-word sentences, presented one word at a time. Each sentence was in itself a natural, meaningful phrase. Substantial intersubject variability was observed in the ERP waveshapes following the words. More than half of the subjects generated P3 components to word stimuli, but those who did showed similar responses to repeated control presentations of a single word. In addition, it was found that all but the first word in the sentence elicited an ERP with a significant left-greater-than-right asymmetry in the late positivity over temporo-parietal regions. The ERPs to the last words were associated with more late positivity than those to the preceding words. One quarter of the sentences, at random, ended with a word printed in a typeface that was different from that of the preceding words. This infrequent change in typeface elicited a complex ERP having three consistent late positive components.

song developed by fitting standardized, formulaic sequences of (speech) sounds to pre-existingmelodies (1962). It is in fact no accident that pitch, which as melody in time represents the frequencyin space, the essence of the phoneme, the contrastive segmental unit of speech.

ABSTRACT Songs convey emotion by means of expressive performance cues (e.g. pitch level, tempo, vocal tone) and lyrics. Although children can interpret both types of cues, it is unclear whether they would focus on performance cues or salient verbal cues when judging the feelings of a singer. To investigate this question, we had 5- to 10-year-old children and adults listen to song fragments that combined emotive performance cues with meaningless syllables or with lyrics that had emotional implications. In both cases, listeners were asked to judge the singer's feelings from the sound of her voice. In the context of meaningless lyrics, children and adults successfully judged the singer's feelings from performance cues. When the lyrics were emotive, adults reliably judged the singer's feelings from performance cues, but children based their judgements on the lyrics. These findings have implications for children's interpretation of vocal emotion in general and sung performances in particular. Copyright

Theories of music origins and the role of musical emotions in the mind are reviewed. Most existing theories contradict each other, and cannot explain mechanisms or roles of musical emotions in workings of the mind, nor evolutionary reasons for music origins. Music seems to be an enigma. Nevertheless, a synthesis of cognitive science and mathematical models of the mind has been proposed describing a fundamental role of music in the functioning and evolution of the mind, consciousness, and cultures. The review considers ancient theories of music as well as contemporary theories advanced by leading authors in this field. It addresses one hypothesis that promises to unify the field and proposes a theory of musical origin based on a fundamental role of music in cognition and evolution of consciousness and culture. We consider a split in the vocalizations of proto-humans into two types: one less emotional and more concretely-semantic, evolving into language, and the other preserving emotional connections along with semantic ambiguity, evolving into music. The proposed hypothesis departs from other theories in considering specific mechanisms of the mind rain, which required the evolution of music parallel with the evolution of cultures and languages. Arguments are reviewed that the evolution of language toward becoming the semantically powerful tool of today required emancipation from emotional encumbrances. The opposite, no less powerful mechanisms required a compensatory evolution of music toward more differentiated and refined emotionality. The need for refined music in the process of cultural evolution is grounded in fundamental mechanisms of the mind. This is why today's human mind and cultures cannot exist without today's music. The reviewed hypothesis gives a basis for future analysis of why different evolutionary paths of languages were paralleled by different evolutionary paths of music. Approaches toward experimental verification of this hypothesis in psychological and neuroimaging research are reviewed.

By looking for properties of consciousness, cognitive neuroscience studies have dramatically enlarged the scope of unconscious cognitive processing. This emerging knowledge inspired the development of new approaches allowing clinicians to probe and disentangle conscious from unconscious cognitive processes in non-communicating brain-injured patients both in terms of behaviour and brain activity. This information is extremely valuable in order to improve diagnosis and prognosis in such patients both at acute and chronic settings. Reciprocally, the growing observations coming from such patients suffering from disorders of consciousness provide valuable constraints to theoretical models of consciousness. In this review we chose to illustrate these recent developments by focusing on brain signals recorded with EEG at bedside in response to auditory stimuli. More precisely, we present the respective EEG markers of unconscious and conscious processing of two classes of auditory stimuli (sounds and words). We show that in both cases, conscious access to the corresponding representation (e.g.: auditory regularity and verbal semantic content) share a similar neural signature (P3b and P600/LPC) that can be distinguished from unconscious processing occurring during an earlier stage (MMN and N400). We propose a two-stage serial model of processing and discuss how unconscious and conscious signatures can be measured at bedside providing relevant informations for both diagnosis and prognosis of consciousness recovery. These two examples emphasize how fruitful can be the bidirectional approach exploring cognition in healthy subjects and in brain-damaged patients.

In earlier experiments we found that the melodies of songs were better recognized when the words were those that had originally been heard with the melody than when they were different. Similarly, song texts were better recognized when sung with their original melodies. Some possible causes of this “integration effect” were investigated in the present experiments. Experiment 1 ruled out the hypothesis that integration was due to semantic connotations imposed on the melody by the words, since songs with nonsense texts yielded the same effect. Experiments 2 and 3 ruled out the possibility that the earlier results were caused by a decrement in recognition when a previously heard component is tested in an unfamiliar context. The results support the notion of an integrated memory representation for melody and text in songs.

The meaning of a speech stream is communicated by more than the particular words used by the speaker. For example, speech melody, referred to as prosody, also contributes to meaning. In a cross-modal priming study we investigated the influence of emotional prosody on the processing of visually presented positive and negative target words. The results indicate that emotional prosody modulates word processing and that the time-course of this modulation differs for males and females. Women show behavioural and electrophysiological priming effects already with a small interval between the prosodic prime and the visual target word. In men, however, similar effects of emotional prosody on word processing occur only for a longer interval between prime and target. This indicates that women make an earlier use of emotional prosody during word processing as compared to men.

Abstract 137 undergraduate Le Moyne College students volunteered in a study on music and its effects on mood and memory. In a 2 x 3 between-subjects design, there were 2 lyric conditions (Happy and Sad Lyrics) and 3 music conditions (No Music, Happy Music, and Sad Music). Participants were asked to listen to instrumental music or mentally to create a melody as they read lyrics to themselves. The study tested cued-recall, self-reported mood state and psychological arousal. Analysis suggested that mood of participants was influenced by the music played, not the lyrics. Results also showed those exposed to No Music had the highest score on the recall test. Personal relevance to the lyrics was not correlated with memory.

Abstract Recent studies have shown that music is capable of conveying semantically meaningful concepts. Several questions have subsequently arisen particularly with regard to the precise mechanisms underlying the communication of musical meaning as well as the role of specific musical features. The present article reports three studies investigating the role of affect expressed by various musical features in priming subsequent word processing at the semantic level. By means of an affective priming paradigm, it was shown that both musically trained and untrained participants evaluated emotional words congruous to the affect expressed by a preceding chord faster than words incongruous to the preceding chord. This behavioral effect was accompanied by an N400, an ERP typically linked with semantic processing, which was specifically modulated by the (mis)match between the prime and the target. This finding was shown for the musical parameter of consonance/dissonance (Experiment 1) and then extended to mode (major/minor) (Experiment 2) and timbre (Experiment 3). Seeing that the N400 is taken to reflect the processing of meaning, the present findings suggest that the emotional expression of single musical features is understood by listeners as such and is probably processed on a level akin to other affective communications (i.e., prosody or vocalizations) because it interferes with subsequent semantic processing. There were no group differences, suggesting that musical expertise does not have an influence on the processing of emotional expression in music and its semantic connotations.

Abstract Three experiments examined the relative impact of lyrics vs music on mood. In Exp 1, the lyrics, music, or lyrics plus music of a sad song were presented to 42 college students. While the music alone increased positive affect and decreased depression, the lyrics plus music had the opposite effect. In Exp 2 (44 college students), the sad lyrics plus music also increased depression and decreased positive affect even when performed in an upbeat style. Exp 3 (40 college students) showed that pairing the melody with the sad lyrics led Ss to rate the melody alone as less pleasant 1 wk later. Lyrics appear to have greater power to direct mood change than music alone and can imbue a particular melody with affective qualities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

A number of evolutionary theories assume that music and language have a common origin as an emotional protolanguage that remains evident in overlapping functions and shared neural circuitry. The most basic prediction of this hypothesis is that sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody derives from the capacity to process music. We examined sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody in a sample of individuals with congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in processing acoustic and structural attributes of music. Twelve individuals with congenital amusia and 12 matched control participants judged the emotional expressions of 96 spoken phrases. Phrases were semantically neutral but prosodie cues (tone of voice) communicated each of six emotional states: happy, tender, afraid, irritated, sad, and no emotion. Congenitally amusic individuals were significantly worse than matched controls at decoding emotional prosody, with decoding rates for some emotions up to 20% lower than that of matched controls. They also reported difficulty understanding emotional prosody in their daily lives, suggesting some awareness of this deficit. The findings support speculations that music and language share mechanisms that trigger emotional responses to acoustic attributes, as predicted by theories that propose a common evolutionary link between these domains.

Previous work has demonstrated that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional meaning using various experimental paradigms. However, whether affective meaning of simple geometric shapes can be automatically activated and influence the evaluations of subsequent stimulus is still unclear. Thus the present study employed an affective priming paradigm to investigate whether and how two geometric shapes (circle vs. downward triangle) impact on the affective processing of subsequently presented faces (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2). At behavioral level, no significant effect of affective congruency was found. However, ERP results in Experiment 1 and 2 showed a typical effect of affective congruency. The LPP elicited by affectively incongruent trials was larger compared to congruent trials. Our results provide support for the notion that downward triangle is perceived as negative and circle as positive and their emotional meaning can be activated automatically and then exert an influence on the electrophysiological processing of subsequent stimuli. The lack of significant congruent effect in behavioral measures and the inversed N400 congruent effect might reveal that the affective meaning of geometric shapes is weak because they are just abstract threatening cues rather than real threat. In addition, because no male participants are included in the present study, our findings are limited to females.

As human faces are important social signals in everyday life, processing of facial affect has recently entered into the focus of neuroscientific research. In the present study, priming of faces showing the same emotional expression was measured with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs) in order to investigate the temporal characteristics of processing facial expressions. Participants classified portraits of unfamiliar persons according to their emotional expression (happy or angry). The portraits were either preceded by the face of a different person expressing the same affect (primed) or the opposite affect (unprimed). ERPs revealed both early and late priming effects, independent of stimulus valence. The early priming effect was characterized by attenuated frontal ERP amplitudes between 100 and 200 ms in response to primed targets. Its dipole sources were localised in the inferior occipitotemporal cortex, possibly related to the detection of expression-specific facial configurations, and in the insular cortex, considered to be involved in affective processes. The late priming effect, an enhancement of the late positive potential (LPP) following unprimed targets, may evidence greater relevance attributed to a change of emotional expressions. Our results (i) point to the view that a change of affect-related facial configuration can be detected very early during face perception and (ii) support previous findings on the amplitude of the late positive potential being rather related to arousal than to the specific valence of an emotional signal.

78 Whether emotional arousal influences affective priming remains poorly understood. 78 Whereas valence congruency influenced both the N400 and the LPP, arousal congruency influenced only the LPP. 78 Arousal congruency mainly modulates post-semantic processes. Arousal level of images impacts behavioral and ERP effects of affective priming.

The affective priming effect has mostly been studied using reaction time (RT) measures; however, the neural bases of affective priming are not well established. To understand the neural correlates of cross-domain emotional stimuli presented rapidly, we obtained event-related potential (ERP) measures during an affective priming task using short SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) conditions. Two sets of 480 picture ord pairs were presented at SOAs of either 150 ms or 250 ms between prime and target stimuli. Participants decided whether the valence of each target word was pleasant or unpleasant. Behavioral results from both SOA conditions were consistent with previous reports of affective priming, with longer RTs for incongruent than congruent pairs at SOAs of 150 ms (771 vs. 738 ms) and 250 ms (765 vs. 720 ms). ERP results revealed that the N400 effect (associated with incongruent pairs in affective processing) occurred at anterior scalp regions at an SOA of 150 ms, and this effect was only observed for negative target words across the scalp at an SOA of 250 ms. In contrast, late positive potentials (LPPs) (associated with attentional resource allocation) occurred across the scalp at an SOA of 250 ms. LPPs were only observed for positive target words at posterior parts of the brain at an SOA of 150 ms. Our finding of ERP signatures at very short SOAs provides the first neural evidence that affective pictures can exert an automatic influence on the evaluation of affective target words.

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of visual affective priming. Eighteen young native English-speakers (6 males, 12 females) participated in the study. Two sets of 720 prime–target pairs (240 affectively congruent, 240 affectively incongruent, and 240 neutral) used either words or pictures as primes and only words as targets. ERPs were recorded from 64 scalp electrodes while participants pressed either “Happy” or “Sad” buttons to indicate target pleasantness. The response time (RT) results confirmed an affective priming effect, with faster responses to affectively congruent trials (659 ms) than affectively incongruent trials (690 ms). Affectively incongruent trials had larger and more negative N200 activation than those to neutral trials. Importantly, a delayed N400 for word prime–target pairs matched the RT results with larger negative amplitudes for incongruent than congruent pairs. This finding suggests that the N400 component is not only sensitive to semantic mismatches, but is also sensitive to affective mismatches for word prime–target pairs.