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Emotion terms such as “sad”, “happy”, and “joyful” apply to a wide range of entities. We use them to refer to mental states of sentient beings, and also to describe features of non‐mental things such as comportment, nature, events, artworks and so on. Drawing on the literature on polysemy, this article provides an in‐depth analysis of emotion descriptions. It argues that emotion terms are polysemous and distinguishes seven related senses. In addition, the article applies the analysis to shed light on a long‐standing debate in philosophy of music concerning emotion descriptions of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a recent publication in feminist music studies that explores the neglected aspects of 'electrosexual' music in the field of electronic music. The book examines themes such as the 'feminised' voice and sexual climax, and addresses exclusionary boundaries in electronic music based on race, gender, and prestige. It also explores the intersectionality of race in electrosexual music and discusses resistance and alternative expressions in Black popular electronic music. While the article acknowledges the book's ethical commitments, it suggests that certain identities and expressions remain unaddressed. The text offers a critical analysis of the book's content and structure, noting its exploration of the influence of academia on research and the rejection of that paradigm. It suggests that the book covers a wide range of topics but may lack emphasis on music analysis and interpretative reading. The article also discusses the role of music theory in feminist, queer, and trans music studies and suggests a broadened definition of music theory. Overall, the book provokes questions and contributes to the field of gender and sexuality studies in music. [Extracted from the article]

This document is a collection of abstracts from the International Journal of Psychology, covering various topics related to psychology and the arts. One abstract discusses the role of aesthetic education in developing psychomotor skills, while another explores the relationship between artistic work and the Rorschach test. Additional abstracts examine gender differences and chronic stress in music undergraduates, the effects of expressive arts-based intervention on traumatized adolescents, and the impact of aesthetic education on cognitive development. There are also abstracts on the classification and consistency of Indian musical modes, the aesthetic appreciation of haiku poetry, and the impact of musical impressing on individuals and society. The article specifically focuses on the art form called Aitys, analyzing its psychological nature and its ability to foster skills needed in the modern market world. It emphasizes the communicative and interactive aspects of Aitys, highlighting its role in promoting creative thinking and creating a sense of ethnic unity among Kazakh young people. [Extracted from the article]

As faculty members, we should support students who want to engage in music research, either in our own labs or in collaboration with music researchers - even if one has never studied music before - and we should encourage the development of our own departments, in terms of the courses we offer and the people we hire. When psychologist Sandra Trehub passed away in January 2023, many of her colleagues noted her role in putting music on psychologists' radar - especially research on music in development. The evidence is all around us all: just look in your pocket (where a device is available that plays music) or at your credit card bill (where you've likely spent money on music) or at your children's education (which likely includes music). A bright future for developmental science on music We see this Special Issue as an existence proof for the vitality, breadth, and importance of music as a core domain of research in developmental science. [Extracted from the article]

Music is often used to "soothe the soul," and one important function of music listening has been emotion regulation. In comparing consumption trends across cultures, past research has shown that individuals in Western countries, with typically higher prevalence of high arousal negative emotions, tend to listen to similarly high arousal rhythmic (danceable) music to cathartically discharge those emotions. However, other studies have shown that Spotify's energy feature, a measure of the intensity‐based arousal of a song, indicates the opposite effect: Energy was higher in songs in East Asian top‐50 charts than in Western ones. Combining evidence from reanalyses of secondary data (Pilot Analyses 1 and 2), sentiment analyses of lyrics from the US and Singapore (Study 1; N = 87 songs), and an emotion induction experiment in Japan and the US (Study 2; N = 353 participants), we show that collectivistic, East Asian cultures generally prefer songs with higher energy levels, and energetic songs are robustly associated with anger downregulation, over sadness and anxiety downregulation. We speculate that energy, as an intensity‐based musical arousal feature, may represent internalizing (control) regulation that one uses to "drown out" anger, which would be more prevalent in East Asian cultures due to sociocultural norms of emotion (non)expression. Conversely, this would be different from the externalizing regulation associated with rhythm‐based musical arousal (i.e., danceability). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational feasibility is a widespread concern that guides the framing and modeling of natural and artificial intelligence. The specification of cognitive system capacities is often shaped by unexamined intuitive assumptions about the search space and complexity of a subcomputation. However, a mistaken intuition might make such initial conceptualizations misleading for what empirical questions appear relevant later on. We undertake here computational‐level modeling and complexity analyses of segmentation — a widely hypothesized subcomputation that plays a requisite role in explanations of capacities across domains, such as speech recognition, music cognition, active sensing, event memory, action parsing, and statistical learning — as a case study to show how crucial it is to formally assess these assumptions. We mathematically prove two sets of results regarding computational hardness and search space size that may run counter to intuition, and position their implications with respect to existing views on the subcapacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music listening plays a pivotal role for children and adolescents, yet it remains unclear how music modulates brain activity at the level of functional networks in this young population. Analysing the dynamics of brain networks occurring and dissolving over time in response to music can provide a better understanding of the neural underpinning of music listening. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 17 preadolescents aged 10–11 years while listening to two similar music pieces separated by periods without music. We subsequently tracked the occurrence of functional brain networks over the recording time using a recent method that detects recurrent patterns of phase‐locking in the fMRI signals: the leading eigenvector dynamics analysis (LEiDA). The probabilities of occurrence and switching profiles of different functional networks were compared between periods of music and no music. Our results showed significantly increased occurrence of a specific functional network during the two music pieces compared to no music, involving the medial orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices—a brain subsystem associated to reward processing. Moreover, the higher the musical reward sensitivity of the preadolescents, the more this network was preceded by a pattern involving the insula. Our findings highlight the involvement of a brain subsystem associated with hedonic and emotional processing during music listening in the early adolescent brain. These results offer novel insight into the neural underpinnings of musical reward in early adolescence, improving our understanding of the important role and the potential benefits of music at this delicate age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose that the positive effect of coming‐of‐age songs on ad effectiveness arises from a mediation process where the music‐evoked interpersonal memories of growing up stored in the brain and their accompanying emotions inevitably play a role, but not so straightforwardly as previously suggested. Rather, their effects work through the heightened familiarity of and peaked preferences for coming‐of‐age songs. We also propose that these sequentially mediated effects are moderated by viewers' developmental attachment styles. We test and find support for these propositions in three multimethod studies with more than 1200 participants born between the 40s and the mid‐70s and almost 60 popular songs released between the 60s and the 2010s. We discuss the implications of our findings, namely for age‐segmented video ads, and suggest future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined a conjugate approach for evaluating auditory stimulus preference for 81 participants using force as a continuous response dimension. First, the researchers used a verbal preference assessment to evaluate each participant's preference for listening to five genres of music. This process identified high-preference and low-preference music for each participant. Thereafter, the researchers exposed each participant to the five music genres in a randomized order while using a hand dynamometer to measure their response force to increase the auditory clarity of the music. The results indicate (a) 63% of the participants' high-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the highest mean force and (b) most participants' low-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the lowest mean force. These findings are consistent with those from Davis et al. (2021) and further support using conjugate preparations for measuring the relative value of some stimulus events., (© 2024 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.)

"New Perspectives on Handel's Music: Essays in Honour of Donald Burrows" is a recent essay collection that offers a fresh look at Handel and his music. The book focuses on Handel's scores, providing detailed musical examples and transcriptions. It also explores Handel's creative practices, including his approach to composition and his tendency to recycle music, libretto, and plots. The collection delves into Handel's reception and the business aspects of his career, as well as gender studies and the psychology of music. The book presents notable discoveries, such as new information on manuscript sources and evidence of Handel's involvement in the Royal African Company. While the book offers valuable insights, it suggests that incorporating research techniques from the digital humanities could provide an even more radical perspective on Handel and his music. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Research on the therapeutic use of music is growing, but the lack of experimental rigour and outcomes diversity has impeded researchers from obtaining clear evidence of the multiple benefits of music interventions in older adults. We explored the outcomes of a music‐complemented intervention integrated into the therapeutic activities of institutionalised elderly people. Methods: A randomised controlled study with baseline, post‐intervention, and 2‐week follow‐up measures was carried out with 50 residents in a caring institution. Several indicators of physical health, cognitive functioning, emotional well‐being, pain, and happiness were assessed at all phases. Results: Mixed factorial ANOVAs showed a positive impact of the music intervention on the outcomes in the intervention group (effect sizes up to.78) compared to the stability in the control (waiting list) group. Notably, the benefits seemed to be temporary, as they decreased progressively after the discontinuation of the intervention. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the effects of a planned music‐based intervention on several health‐ and well‐being‐related outcomes and has important applications regarding the use of music as a complement in therapeutic interventions with elderly people. The implementation of music therapy within the comprehensive care of institutionalised people must be maintained over time for the effects to be durable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues: Music is among the most frequently used medium to promote young adults' well‐being. To that aim, the efficiency of music is explained by its capacity to modulate emotions through its effect on the brain's reward pathways. Hence, music could help individuals suffering from dysregulations in these pathways, whose experience of positive emotions is often inhibited. Such dysregulations are particularly present in individuals with problematic psychoactive substance (PAS) use, who are overrepresented in the context of homelessness. While few of them initiate treatment, they successfully rely on their own resources to promote their well‐being, including music, though its impact in this context remains under‐studied. Approach: This scoping review describes the impact of music on the well‐being, PAS use and addictive trajectory of young housed and homeless individuals with problematic PAS use. Eleven French and English databases were screened for peer‐reviewed articles using concepts and keywords related to music, PAS and well‐being. From the 3697 results, 39 were reviewed. Results were organised according to the observed impact of music and analysed critically. Key Findings: Literature shows that PAS users value the impact of music in meeting emotional, psychological and social needs, especially when they experience homelessness. Yet, research has been highly limited to the harmful consequences of music, limiting our knowledge of its potential benefits. Implications and Conclusion: To deepen our understanding about the impact of music, future research should endorse a broader perspective and consider the personal and contextual experiences accompanying the involvement in music, factors that were traditionally overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musicians outperform non-musicians in vocal emotion perception, likely because of increased sensitivity to acoustic cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre. Yet, how musicians make use of these acoustic cues to perceive emotions, and how they might differ from non-musicians, is unclear. To address these points, we created vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure or sadness, either in all acoustic cues, or selectively in either F0 or timbre only. We then compared vocal emotion perception performance between professional/semi-professional musicians (N = 39) and non-musicians (N = 38), all socialized in Western music culture. Compared to non-musicians, musicians classified vocal emotions more accurately. This advantage was seen in the full and F0-modulated conditions, but was absent in the timbre-modulated condition indicating that musicians excel at perceiving the melody (F0), but not the timbre of vocal emotions. Further, F0 seemed more important than timbre for the recognition of all emotional categories. Additional exploratory analyses revealed a link between time-varying F0 perception in music and voices that was independent of musical training. Together, these findings suggest that musicians are particularly tuned to the melody of vocal emotions, presumably due to a natural predisposition to exploit melodic patterns., (© 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.)

There's a lot happening in Charles Mingus's 1956 tone poem "Pithecanthropus Erectus", from the album of the same name. Building on this, he argues that there are three interconnected mental spaces: one associated with the source (such as music), one associated with the target (of which the music is trying to be a sonic analogue) and one associated with the inferred connection (Zbikowski uses the term "induced schema" for this [p. 48]) between the two sources. To this end, in Chapter 4, Zbikowski investigates the relationships between music and gesture or dance, first by discussing the coordination of music and movement in Fred Astaire's performance of "The Way You Look Tonight" from the 1936 film I Swing Time i . To make the case, Zbikowski distinguishes between music I as i gesture (in which gesture goes beyond linguistic meaning and exists most purely in music; see Blackmur 1952 and Cone 1974) and music I and i gesture (in which music and gesture are independent - albeit interdependent - forms of expression). [Extracted from the article]

Background: Stress and anxiety are increasingly common among young people. The current research describes two studies comparing the effects of self‐selected and researcher‐selected music on induced negative affect (state anxiety and physiological arousal), and state mindfulness. Method: In Study 1, 70 undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: researcher‐selected music, self‐selected music, or a silent control condition. In Study 2, with 75 undergraduates, effects of music were compared to an active control (listening to a radio show). Negative affect was induced using a speech preparation and arithmetic task, followed by music listening or control. Self‐reported anxiety and blood pressure were measured at baseline, post‐induction, and post‐intervention. Study 2 included state mindfulness as a dependent measure. Results: Study 1 indicated that participants who listened to music (self‐selected and researcher‐selected) reported significantly greater anxiety reduction than participants in the silent control condition. Music did not reduce anxiety compared to an active control in Study 2. However, music listening significantly increased levels of state mindfulness, which predicted lower anxiety after self‐selected music listening. Conclusions: Music may provide regulation in preparation for stressful events. Yet, the results of Study 2 indicate that other activities have similar benefits, and shows, for the first time, that music listening increases mindfulness following a stressor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The embodied nature of music-making - more recently described as embodied cognition - has for some time been an established concept in music psychology and musicology. Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance ... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. It is rather that unless one I can i dance or move to the music - unless one has a I capacity i of following the music, entraining to its rhythm - then one does not know what the music is and cannot identify it as music. Concerning propositions of philosophical anthropology such as " I Human societies have music and dance i " and " I Humans take pleasure in music and dance, i " it might be asked: Whose concept of music - the Western one? R. Murray Schafer, composer and writer on soundscape, argues that before the modern era - before urban musical sounds such as church bells and the postman's horn were replaced by mechanical noises, and music moved into the concert hall - music and noise were not distinct categories. [Extracted from the article]

The pleasurable urge to move to music (PLUMM) activates motor and reward areas of the brain and is thought to be driven by predictive processes. Dopamine in motor and limbic networks is implicated in beat-based timing and music-induced pleasure, suggesting a central role of basal ganglia (BG) dopaminergic systems in PLUMM. This study tested this hypothesis by comparing PLUMM in participants with Parkinson's disease (PD), age-matched controls, and young controls. Participants listened to musical sequences with varying rhythmic and harmonic complexity (low, medium and high), and rated their experienced pleasure and urge to move to the rhythm. In line with previous results, healthy younger participants showed an inverted U-shaped relationship between rhythmic complexity and ratings, with preference for medium complexity rhythms, while age-matched controls showed a similar, but weaker, inverted U-shaped response. Conversely, PD showed a significantly flattened response for both the urge to move and pleasure. Crucially, this flattened response could not be attributed to differences in rhythm discrimination and did not reflect an overall decrease in ratings. For harmonic complexity, PD showed a negative linear pattern for both the urge to move and pleasure while healthy age-matched controls showed the same pattern for pleasure and an inverted U for the urge to move. This contrasts with the pattern observed in young healthy controls in previous studies, suggesting that both healthy aging and PD also influence affective responses to harmonic complexity. Together, these results support the role of dopamine within cortico-striatal circuits in the predictive processes that form the link between the perceptual processing of rhythmic patterns and the affective and motor responses to rhythmic music., (© 2023 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Music can be interpreted by attributing syntactic relationships to sequential musical events, and, computationally, such musical interpretation represents an analogous combinatorial task to syntactic processing in language. While this perspective has been primarily addressed in the domain of harmony, we focus here on rhythm in the Western tonal idiom, and we propose for the first time a framework for modeling the moment-by-moment execution of processing operations involved in the interpretation of music. Our approach is based on (1) a music-theoretically motivated grammar formalizing the competence of rhythmic interpretation in terms of three basic types of dependency (preparation, syncopation, and split; Rohrmeier, 2020), and (2) psychologically plausible predictions about the complexity of structural integration and memory storage operations, necessary for parsing hierarchical dependencies, derived from the dependency locality theory (Gibson, 2000). With a behavioral experiment, we exemplify an empirical implementation of the proposed theoretical framework. One hundred listeners were asked to reproduce the location of a visual flash presented while listening to three rhythmic excerpts, each exemplifying a different interpretation under the formal grammar. The hypothesized execution of syntactic-processing operations was found to be a significant predictor of the observed displacement between the reported and the objective location of the flashes. Overall, this study presents a theoretical approach and a first empirical proof-of-concept for modeling the cognitive process resulting in such interpretation as a form of syntactic parsing with algorithmic similarities to its linguistic counterpart. Results from the present small-scale experiment should not be read as a final test of the theory, but they are consistent with the theoretical predictions after controlling for several possible confounding factors and may form the basis for further large-scale and ecological testing., (© 2023 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive Science Society (CSS).)

Music streaming services have become today's most popular way of consuming music. These services give their users access to a comprehensive music library without providing legal ownership of that music. However, recent research suggests that music streaming users still continue to experience feelings of ownership. To advance our understanding, this study investigates the role of psychological ownership in music streaming consumption. In particular, based on the theory of psychological ownership, it is analyzed how service‐ and music‐based psychological ownership emerge. The study further investigates the relationship between these two targets of ownership and whether music‐based psychological ownership is positively related to users' intention to switch from a music streaming service's free version to its paid premium version. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicate that service‐based psychological ownership, stemming from users' investment of self into the service, is positively related to music‐based psychological ownership, which is positively influenced by the sense of control over the music accessed. The results also show that music‐based psychological ownership is strongly related to users' intention to switch from free to premium, which highlights the importance of psychological ownership for providers of music streaming services, particularly those operating a feature‐limited freemium model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to the cultural form of music playlist. Topics discussed include Playlist as a mode of mood manipulation that turns music into ‘emotional wallpaper; vocal interfaces abolish the activity of scrolling through collections altogether and so assimilate the playlist ever further; and significance of playlist as marking a loss of musical meaning neglects invention of the album for developing aesthetic ideas.

Objective: Urodynamic studies (UDS) include assessments of the physics and physiology of the lower urinary tract (LUT). It is an invasive test and patients can feel fear and anxiety, especially at the beginning of the test. The aim of this study was to determine whether listening to music during urodynamic study decreases patient anxiety and pain. Methods: Sixty‐two patients who underwent urodynamic study were randomized into the following groups: no music (group 1, n = 30) or classical music (group 2, n = 32) during the procedure. Patient anxiety levels were quantified using the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Beck's Anxiety Inventory (BAI). A visual analog scale (VAS) was used for self‐assessment of discomfort and willingness among patients to have a repeat urodynamic study. Results: Demographic characteristics, mean age, duration of procedure, systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) and heart rate before procedure were statistically significantly similar between the two groups. Statistically significant differences were detected between the two groups in the mean pain score on VAS (4.1 ± 1.4 vs 2.6 ± 1.8), mean post‐procedural STAI score (46 ± 5.8 vs 37.3 ± 5) and mean BAI score (14.2 ± 1.7 vs 3.5 ± 0.7). SBP and DBP and heart rate were similar between the groups. Conclusion: Music is a cheap, safe and effective intervention that has gained increasing recognition as an effective tool to reduce pain and anxiety. Listening to music during urodynamic study reduced patient pain and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is having a profound effect on societies worldwide and the impact that it is having on children cannot be underestimated. REACTING TO THE PANDEMIC: THE FOUR KEY STAGES Comparative analyses and considerations based on inferential reasoning suggest that this pandemic will involve four substantially different phases with regard to child mental health. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: Music perception depends on internal psychological models derived through exposure to a musical culture. It is hypothesized that this musical enculturation depends on two cognitive processes: (1) statistical learning, in which listeners acquire internal cognitive models of statistical regularities present in the music to which they are exposed; and (2) probabilistic prediction based on these learned models that enables listeners to organize and process their mental representations of music. To corroborate these hypotheses, I review research that uses a computational model of probabilistic prediction based on statistical learning (the information dynamics of music (IDyOM) model) to simulate data from empirical studies of human listeners. The results show that a broad range of psychological processes involved in music perception—expectation, emotion, memory, similarity, segmentation, and meter—can be understood in terms of a single, underlying process of probabilistic prediction using learned statistical models. Furthermore, IDyOM simulations of listeners from different musical cultures demonstrate that statistical learning can plausibly predict causal effects of differential cultural exposure to musical styles, providing a quantitative model of cultural distance. Understanding the neural basis of musical enculturation will benefit from close coordination between empirical neuroimaging and computational modeling of underlying mechanisms, as outlined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We investigated whether dancing influences the emotional response to music, compared to when music is listened to in the absence of movement. Forty participants without previous dance training listened to “groovy” and “nongroovy” music excerpts while either dancing or refraining from movement. Participants were also tested while imitating their own dance movements, but in the absence of music as a control condition. Emotion ratings and ratings of flow were collected following each condition. Dance movements were recorded using motion capture. We found that the state of flow was increased specifically during spontaneous dance to groovy excerpts, compared with both still listening and motor imitation. Emotions in the realms of vitality (such as joy and power) and sublimity (such as wonder and nostalgia) were evoked by music in general, whether participants moved or not. Significant correlations were found between the emotional and flow responses to music and whole‐body acceleration profiles. Thus, the results highlight a distinct state of flow when dancing, which may be of use to promote well‐being and to address certain clinical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Whether the cognitive processing of music and speech relies on shared or distinct neuronal mechanisms remains unclear. Music and language processing in the brain are right and left temporal functions, respectively. We studied patients with musicogenic epilepsy (ME) that was specifically triggered by popular songs to analyze brain hyperexcitability triggered by specific stimuli. The study included two men and one woman (all right‐handed, aged 35–55 years). The patients had sound‐triggered left temporal ME in response to popular songs with vocals, but not to instrumental, classical, or nonvocal piano solo versions of the same song. Sentimental lyrics, high‐pitched singing, specificity/familiarity, and singing in the native language were the most significant triggering factors. We found that recognition of the human voice and analysis of lyrics are important causal factors in left temporal ME and provide observational evidence that sounds with speech structure are predominantly processed in the left temporal lobe. A literature review indicated that language‐associated stimuli triggered ME in the left temporal epileptogenic zone at a nearly twofold higher rate compared with the right temporal region. Further research on ME may enhance understanding of the cognitive neuroscience of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Creativity has been defined as the ability to produce output that is novel, useful, beneficial, and desired by an audience. But what is musical creativity, and relatedly, to what extent does creativity depend on domain‐general or domain‐specific neural and cognitive processes? To what extent can musical creativity be taught? To answer these questions from a reductionist scientific approach, we must attempt to isolate the creative process as it pertains to music. Recent work in the neuroscience of creativity has turned to musical improvisation as a window into real‐time musical creative process in the brain. Here, I provide an overview of recent research in the neuroscience of musical improvisation, especially focusing on multimodal neuroimaging studies. This research informs a model of creativity as a combination of generative and reactive processes that coordinate their functions to give rise to perpetually novel and aesthetically rewarding improvised musical output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Though several studies show that genetic factors influence individual differences in musical engagement, aptitude, and achievement, no study to date has investigated whether specialization among musically active individuals in terms of choice of instrument and genre is heritable. Using a large twin cohort, we explored whether individual differences in instrument choice, instrument category, and the type of music individuals engage in can entirely be explained by the environment or are partly due to genetic influences. About 10,000 Swedish twins answered an extensive questionnaire about music‐related traits, including information on the instrument and genre they played. Of those, 1259 same‐sex twin pairs reported to either play an instrument or sing. We calculated the odds ratios (ORs) for concordance in music choices (if both twins played) comparing identical and nonidentical twin pairs, with significant ORs indicating that identical twins are more likely to engage in the same type of music‐related behavior than are nonidentical twins. The results showed that for almost all music‐related variables, the odds were significantly higher for identical twins to play the same musical instrument or music genre, suggesting significant genetic influences on such music specialization. Possible interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In recent years, music and musicality have been the focus of an increasing amount of research effort. This has led to a growing role and visibility of the contribution of (bio)musicology to the field of neuroscience and cognitive sciences at large. While it has been widely acknowledged that there are commonalities between speech, language, and musicality, several researchers explain this by considering musicality as an epiphenomenon of language. However, an alternative hypothesis is that musicality is an innate and widely shared capacity for music that can be seen as a natural, spontaneously developing set of traits based on and constrained by our cognitive abilities and their underlying biology. A comparative study of musicality in humans and well‐known animal models (monkeys, birds, pinnipeds) will further our insights on which features of musicality are exclusive to humans and which are shared between humans and nonhuman animals, contribute to an understanding of the musical phenotype, and further constrain existing evolutionary theories of music and musicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When searching for genetic markers inherited together with musical aptitude, genes affecting inner ear development and brain function were identified. The alpha‐synuclein gene (SNCA), located in the most significant linkage region of musical aptitude, was overexpressed when listening and performing music. The GATA‐binding protein 2 gene (GATA2) was located in the best associated region of musical aptitude and regulates SNCA in dopaminergic neurons, thus linking DNA‐ and RNA‐based studies of music‐related traits together. In addition to SNCA, several other genes were linked to dopamine metabolism. Mutations in SNCA predispose to Lewy‐body dementia and cause Parkinson disease in humans and affect song production in songbirds. Several other birdsong genes were found in transcriptome analysis, suggesting a common evolutionary background of sound perception and production in humans and songbirds. Regions of positive selection with musical aptitude contained genes affecting auditory perception, cognitive performance, memory, human language development, and song perception and production of songbirds. The data support the role of dopaminergic pathway and their link to the reward mechanism as a molecular determinant in positive selection of music. Integration of gene‐level data from the literature across multiple species prioritized activity‐dependent immediate early genes as candidate genes in musical aptitude and listening to and performing music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Rhythmic incongruity in the form of syncopation is a prominent feature of many contemporary musical styles. Syncopations afford incongruity between rhythmic patterns and the meter, giving rise to mental models of differently accented isochronous beats. Syncopations occur either in isolation or as part of rhythmic patterns, so‐called grooves. On the basis of the predictive coding framework, we discuss how brain processing of rhythm can be seen as a special case of predictive coding. We present a simple, yet powerful model for how the brain processes rhythmic incongruity: the model for predictive coding of rhythmic incongruity. Our model proposes that a given rhythm's syncopation and its metrical uncertainty (precision) is at the heart of how the brain models rhythm and meter based on priors, predictions, and prediction error. Our minimal model can explain prominent features of brain processing of syncopation: why isolated syncopations lead to stronger prediction error in the brains of musicians, as evidenced by larger event‐related potentials to rhythmic incongruity, and why we all experience a stronger urge to move to grooves with a medium level of syncopation compared with low and high levels of syncopation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To form a coherent percept of the environment, the brain must integrate sensory signals emanating from a common source but segregate those from different sources. Temporal regularities are prominent cues for multisensory integration, particularly for speech and music perception. In line with models of predictive coding, we suggest that the brain adapts an internal model to the statistical regularities in its environment. This internal model enables cross‐sensory and sensorimotor temporal predictions as a mechanism to arbitrate between integration and segregation of signals from different senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sensorimotor learning requires knowledge of the relationship between movements and sensory effects: a sensorimotor map. Generally, these mappings are not innate but have to be learned. During learning, the challenge is to build a continuous map from a set of discrete observations, that is, predict locations of novel targets. One hypothesis is that the learner linearly interpolates among discrete observations that are already in the map. Here, this hypothesis is tested by exposing human subjects to a novel mapping between arm movements and sounds. Participants were passively moved to the edges of the workspace receiving the corresponding sounds and then were presented intermediate sounds and asked to make movements to locations they thought corresponded to those sounds. It is observed that average movements roughly match linear interpolation of the space. However, the actual distribution of participants' movements is best described by a bimodal reaching strategy in which they move to one of two locations near the workspace edge where they had prior exposure to the sound–movement pairing. These results suggest that interpolation happens to a limited extent only and that the acquisition of sensorimotor maps may not be driven by interpolation but instead relies on a flexible recombination of instance‐based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 1999 Arts and Religion Survey, this article builds on the work of Tia DeNora and the understanding of music as a technology of health by focusing on an important aspect of music's impact on mental health, emotional reflection. The study first examines the relationship between musical experiences and the perceived effectiveness of music as a coping tool in everyday life. The results indicate that musical experience is positively associated with the perception of music as an effective coping mechanism, controlling for relevant demographic and artistic factors included in the survey. The analysis then assesses the relationship between music's perceived effectiveness as a coping mechanism and emotional reflection, indicating a positive association between the two. Aesthetic disposition and parental education are also positive predictors of using music to cope and emotional reflection. The study demonstrates that those who value music as a means of coping may be more emotionally reflective and in turn, experience benefits related to positive mental health. The results also highlight the importance of considering both micro‐ and macro‐theoretical approaches to understanding musical practices and their role in health improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined how music frequency affected consumers’ perception and decision making. The results of three experimental studies show that music frequency affects perceived distance between the sound source and the perceiver. Consequently, the representation of marketing message that matched (vs. mismatched) the background music's frequency enhanced consumers’ evaluative judgments. Specifically, Study 1A demonstrates that low‐frequency (vs. high‐frequency) music increased perceived distance. Studies 2, 3A, and 3B indicate that low‐frequency (high‐frequency) music matched products with abstract (concrete) representations and marketing messages signifying far (near) psychological distance. The congruency between psychological distance induced by music frequency and mental representations of products and message orientation offers a novel perspective on the notion of congruency. Moreover, Study 2 provides evidence that supports the congruency–fluency–evaluation chain (i.e., the mediating role of fluency), and Studies 3A and 3B show that the congruency has downstream effects. This study provides a theoretical contribution to the literature on the effects of music in marketing contexts by presenting convergent evidence that individuals exposed to low‐frequency (high‐frequency) music are inclined to construe a marketing message at a high (low) level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five-month- old infants selectively attend to novel people who sing melodies originally learned from a parent, but not melodies learned from a musical toy or from an unfamiliar singing adult, suggesting that music conveys social information to infant listeners. Here, we test this interpretation further in older infants with a more direct measure of social preferences. We randomly assigned 64 11-month- old infants to 1–2 weeks’ exposure to one of two novel play songs that a parent either sang or produced by activating a recording inside a toy. Infants then viewed videos of two new people, each singing one song. When the people, now silent, each presented the infant with an object, infants in both conditions preferentially chose the object endorsed by the singer of the familiar song. Nevertheless, infants’ visual attention to that object was predicted by the degree of song exposure only for infants who learned from the singing of a parent. Eleven-month- olds thus garner social information from songs, whether learned from singing people or from social play with musical toys, but parental singing has distinctive effects on infants’ responses to new singers. Both findings support the hypothesis that infants endow music with social meaning. These findings raise questions concerning the types of music and behavioral contexts that elicit infants’ social responses to those who share music with them, and they support suggestions concerning the psychological functions of music both in contemporary environments and in the environments in which humans evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present study analyzes the effects of famous versus nonfamous ambient music in retail venues on actual shoppers' emotions and cognitions, which, in turn, affect buying intention and brand images. Our theoretical model was basically validated by the data collected in actual shopping venues in 2 studies. Study 1 explores the effects of music famousness on buying intention through the mediation of affect, self‐congruity, and product quality (N = 304). Study 2 explores the effects of music famousness on perceived brand quality through the mediation of self‐congruity and store attitude (N = 351). As expected, famous music has positive effects on shoppers' responses according to the mediating role of affective and cognitive responses and their sequential mediating effects. Paradoxically, famous music has also negative effects on these variables because it distracts consumers from their shopping, reducing cognitive activities. We draw theoretical and managerial conclusions from these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In a randomised controlled trial, we investigated whether a cognitive training based on rhythm-music and music improvisation exercises had positive effects on executive functions in older participants.Methods: Thirty-five residents in a guest home with mild-moderate cognitive impairment and healthy ageing were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 18) featuring cognitive music training composed of 12 bi-weekly 70-min sessions, and a control group (n = 17) attended 12 bi-weekly 45-min sessions of gymnastic activities offered by the institute. A neuropsychological test battery was administered at baseline and at the end of treatment, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, verbal fluency test, Trail Making Test A, attentional matrices test and clock-drawing test.Results: Pre-test and post-test comparison showed a significant improvement for the experimental group reflected in the Mini-Mental State Examination (F(1,33) = 13.906; p < 0.001; pη2  = 0.296), verbal fluency test (VFL) (F(1,33) = 6.816; p < 0.013; pη2  = 0.171), and clock-drawing test (F(1,29) = 16.744; p < 0.001; pη2  = 0.366), while the control group did not show any significant improvements. In addition, there was a tendency towards significance for the Trail Making Test A (F(1,20) = 3.268; p < 0.086; pη2  = 0.140). Regarding the attentional matrices test, no significant differences were found for the experimental group (F(1,29) = 2.833; p < 0.103; pη2  = 0.089), while the control group had a significant performance reduction (F(1,29) = 3.947; p < 0.050; pη2  = 0.120).Conclusion: The use of a cognitive protocol based on music-rhythmic exercises and music improvisation exercises is associated with improved cognitive functions in older people with mild-moderate cognitive impairment regardless of the individual's degree of cognitive reserve. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In retail environments, consumers commonly evaluate products while standing on some type of flooring and concurrently being exposed to music; however, no study has examined the interaction of these two atmospheric cues. To bridge this gap, this research examines whether retailers can benefit from creating multisensory atmospheric congruent rather than incongruent retail environments of flooring and music. The results of an experiment in a real retail store reveal positive effects of multisensory congruent retail environments (e.g., soft music combined with soft flooring) on product evaluations. This study provides a new process explanation with consumers' purchase-related self-confidence mediating these effects. Specifically, consumers in congruent rather than incongruent retail environments experience more purchase-related self-confidence, which in turn leads to more favorable product evaluations. Furthermore, this study shows that consumers with a low rather than a high preference for haptic information are influenced more by multisensory atmospheric congruence when evaluating a product haptically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although independent lines of research have identified misogynistic lyrical content and traditional gender role beliefs as reliable predictors of men's female-directed aggression, more research is needed to understand the extent to which these variables may function in synthesis to potentiate aggression. In the current study, men (N = 193), who completed questionnaires relevant to their conformity to masculine norms and level of hostile and benevolent sexism, were exposed to either misogynistic or neutral lyrics before having the opportunity to shock an ostensible female confederate in a bogus reaction time task that, in effect, measured aggression. Results indicated that misogynistic lyrics and hostile sexism significantly predicted both unprovoked and provoked aggression against a female target. Contrary to expectations, moderating effects of gender role beliefs on the relationship between misogynistic lyrics and men's aggression were not found. Implications are discussed in terms of the costs of misogyny in media for women's lives. Aggr. Behav. 43:123-132, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has found that music brings back more vivid and emotional autobiographical memories than various other retrieval cues. However, such studies have often been low in ecological validity and constrained by relatively limited cue selection and predominantly young adult samples. Here, we compared music to food as cues for autobiographical memories in everyday life in young and older adults. In two separate four-day periods, 39 younger (ages 18-34) and 39 older (ages 60-77) adults recorded their music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in paper diaries. Across both age groups, music triggered more frequent autobiographical memories, a greater proportion of involuntary memories, and memories rated as more personally important in comparison to food cues. Age differences impacted music- and food-evoked memories similarly, with older adults consistently recalling older and less specific memories, which they rated as more positive, vivid, and rehearsed. However, young and older adults did not differ in the number or involuntary nature of their recorded memories. This work represents an important step in understanding the phenomenology of naturally occurring music-evoked autobiographical memories across adulthood and provides new insights into how and why music may be a more effective trigger for personally valued memories than certain other everyday cues., (© 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.)

Objective: We tested the effect of music on idiographic cognitive inferences about stressful events., Method: In Study 1 (n = 336), adult participants from the United States were randomly assigned to non-familiar songs that differed by lyrical content and tempo. In Studies 2 (n = 302) and 3 (n = 323), adult participants from the United States were randomly assigned to either a positive, neutral or no-song condition., Results: The results of Study 1 failed to support any of the study hypotheses. Given the null results, we decided to conduct a second study focused on increasing external validity and power (i.e., including fewer experimental conditions). The results of Study 2 showed that adults randomly assigned to a familiar upbeat song condition experienced an increase in positive affect and a decrease in event-specific negative cognitions. A third study was then conducted to replicate the results and rule out a potential confound. Results of Study 3 corroborated the results of Study 2., Conclusion: Taken together (Studies 2 and 3), results indicate it may be useful for future research to test the extent to which familiar upbeat music can be helpful during cognitive restructuring activities in psychotherapy to nudge people to generate more adaptive cognitions., (© 2023 British Psychological Society.)

Mobile music listening has become an increasingly pervasive part of urban life. Yet it represents an area of enquiry with which urban studies scholars have yet to engage meaningfully. This essay considers the role of mobile music devices in creating new sonic, emotional and social interactions with and within the city. While academic work in this area has emphasized the use of these devices as a 'tuning out' of the physicality of the city, we suggest that they might also be used as part of a 'tuning in' that enhances the meaning and intensity of engagements with the city. In making this case, the essay considers two areas of academic enquiry that highlight the use of mobile music devices in intensified engagements with the city: first, recent writing on the sonic ecologies of the city that emphasize 'city sounds' as part of the urban experience; and secondly, recent advances in the field of urban computing that provide technologies for location-aware music exchanges and mediated social interactions. The essay emphasizes mobile music listening as one area of critical enquiry that can help develop our understanding of the ways in which the pervasiveness of mobile devices is recalibrating the experience of urban spatiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is thought possible without language? Individuals with global aphasia, who have almost no ability to understand or produce language, provide a powerful opportunity to find out. Surprisingly, despite their near-total loss of language, these individuals are nonetheless able to add and subtract, solve logic problems, think about another person's thoughts, appreciate music, and successfully navigate their environments. Further, neuroimaging studies show that healthy adults strongly engage the brain's language areas when they understand a sentence, but not when they perform other nonlinguistic tasks such as arithmetic, storing information in working memory, inhibiting prepotent responses, or listening to music. Together, these two complementary lines of evidence provide a clear answer: many aspects of thought engage distinct brain regions from, and do not depend on, language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men and women often display different physiological responses to emotional stimuli, and these responses can be affected by brain damage. Here, we investigated how brain damage differentially affects electrodermal responses based on sex. We studied neurologically normal, healthy adults and a sample of neurological patients. Participants listened to music, an emotional stimulus that reliably elicits skin conductance responses (SCRs). Electrodermal activity was recorded while participants listened to musical clips. When analyzing the data without regard to sex, there were no differences between healthy and brain-damaged participants in their SCRs. However, we found a significant interaction between brain injury status and sex. For men, brain damage significantly reduced SCRs. For women, there were no differences between brain-damaged participants and neurologically healthy participants. These findings illustrate the importance of including demographic variables, such as sex, when investigating brain-behavior relationships with a psychophysiological dependent variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For music students in the early stages of learning, the music may seem to be hidden behind the scores. To support home practising, Juntunen has created the Playback Orchestra method with which the students can practise with the support of the notation program playback of the full orchestra. The results of testing the method with first-grade string instrument students showed that the group who used the playback method learned faster than the group who did not. The clear and expressive body movements that are developed effectively by the playback method also provide support for leading a group by playing. The aim of this recent pilot study was to discover if improvisation benefits from an audio learning component. The research is a qualitative case study combined with quasiexperimental tests and quantitative analyses. The improvisation task was to describe a storm in a long musical tale, Mickey Mouse in a Storm, which had several episodes in different atmospheres. The results showed that the playback group was clearly better in terms of 'joy of playing', 'concentrating', 'finding one's own improvising ideas' and 'understanding the overall picture'. The most crucial finding was that 'intensive continuity' improved faster in the playback group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every individual has a preferred musical tempo, which peaks slightly above 120 beats per minute and is subject to interindividual variation. The preferred tempo is believed to be associated with rhythmic body movements as well as motor cortex activity. However, a long-standing question is whether preferred tempo is determined biologically. To uncover the neural correlates of preferred tempo, we first determined an individual's preferred tempo using a multistep procedure. Subsequently, we correlated the preferred tempo with a general EEG timing parameter as well as perceptual and motor EEG correlates-namely, individual alpha frequency, auditory evoked gamma band response, and motor beta activity. Results showed a significant relation between preferred tempo and the frequency of motor beta activity. These findings suggest that individual tempo preferences result from neural activity in the motor cortex, explaining the interindividual variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producing and perceiving music engage a wide range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and emotional processes. Emotions are a central feature of the enjoyment of music, with a large variety of affective states consistently reported by people while listening to music. However, besides joy or sadness, music often elicits feelings of wonder, nostalgia, or tenderness, which do not correspond to emotion categories typically studied in neuroscience and whose neural substrates remain largely unknown. Here we review the similarities and differences in the neural substrates underlying these 'complex' music-evoked emotions relative to other more 'basic' emotional experiences. We suggest that these emotions emerge through a combination of activation in emotional and motivational brain systems (e.g., including reward pathways) that confer its valence to music, with activation in several other areas outside emotional systems, including motor, attention, or memory-related regions. We then discuss the neural substrates underlying the entrainment of cognitive and motor processes by music and their relation to affective experience. These effects have important implications for the potential therapeutic use of music in neurological or psychiatric diseases, particularly those associated with motor, attention, or affective disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most people derive pleasure from music. Neuroimaging studies show that the reward system of the human brain is central to this experience. Specifically, the dorsal and ventral striatum release dopamine when listening to pleasurable music, and activity in these structures also codes the reward value of musical excerpts. Moreover, the striatum interacts with cortical mechanisms involved in perception and valuation of musical stimuli. Recent studies have begun to explore individual differences in the way that this complex system functions. Development of a questionnaire for music reward experiences has allowed the identification of separable factors associated with musical pleasure, described as music-seeking, emotion-evocation, mood regulation, sensorimotor, and social factors. Applying this questionnaire to a large sample uncovered approximately 5% of the population with low sensitivity to musical reward in the absence of generalized anhedonia or depression. Further study of this group revealed that there are individuals who respond normally both behaviorally and psychophysiologically to rewards other than music (e.g., monetary value) but do not experience pleasure from music despite normal music perception ability and preserved ability to identify intended emotions in musical passages. This specific music anhedonia bears further study, as it may shed light on the function and dysfunction of the reward system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]