The gray matter volume of the amygdala is correlated with the perception of melodic intervals: a voxel-based morphometry study

Music is not simply a series of organized pitches, rhythms, and timbres, it is capable of evoking emotions. In the present study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was employed to explore the neural basis that may link music to emotion. To do this, we identified the neuroanatomical correlates of the ability to extract pitch interval size in a music segment (i.e., interval perception) in a large population of healthy young adults (N = 264). Behaviorally, we found that interval perception was correlated with daily emotional experiences, indicating the intrinsic link between music and emotion. Neurally, and as expected, we found that interval perception was positively correlated with the gray matter volume (GMV) of the bilateral temporal cortex. More important, a larger GMV of the bilateral amygdala was associated with better interval perception, suggesting that the amygdala, which is the neural substrate of emotional processing, is also involved in music processing. In sum, our study provides one of first neuroanatomical evidence on the association between the amygdala and music, which contributes to our understanding of exactly how music evokes emotional responses

Neural processing of criticism and positive comments from relatives in individuals with schizotypal personality traits

Objectives. High negative expressed emotion by family members towards schizophrenia patients increases the risk of subsequent relapse. The study aimed to determine whether individuals with high schizotypy (HS) and low schizotypy (LS) would differ in activation of brain areas involved in cognitive control when listening to relative criticism

Auditory hedonic phenotypes in dementia: A behavioural and neuroanatomical analysis

Patients with dementia may exhibit abnormally altered liking for environmental sounds and music but such altered auditory hedonic responses have not been studied systematically. Here we addressed this issue in a cohort of 73 patients representing major canonical dementia syndromes (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic dementia (SD), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) amnestic Alzheimer's disease (AD)) using a semi-structured caregiver behavioural questionnaire and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of patients' brain MR images. Behavioural responses signalling abnormal aversion to environmental sounds, aversion to music or heightened pleasure in music (‘musicophilia’) occurred in around half of the cohort but showed clear syndromic and genetic segregation, occurring in most patients with bvFTD but infrequently in PNFA and more commonly in association with MAPT than C9orf72 mutations. Aversion to sounds was the exclusive auditory phenotype in AD whereas more complex phenotypes including musicophilia were common in bvFTD and SD. Auditory hedonic alterations correlated with grey matter loss in a common, distributed, right-lateralised network including antero-mesial temporal lobe, insula, anterior cingulate and nucleus accumbens. Our findings suggest that abnormalities of auditory hedonic processing are a significant issue in common dementias. Sounds may constitute a novel probe of brain mechanisms for emotional salience coding that are targeted by neurodegenerative disease

Dynamic Emotional and Neural Responses to Music Depend on Performance Expression and Listener Experience

Apart from its natural relevance to cognition, music provides a window into the intimate relationships between production, perception, experience, and emotion. Here, emotional responses and neural activity were observed as they evolved together with stimulus parameters over several minutes. Participants listened to a skilled music performance that included the natural fluctuations in timing and sound intensity that musicians use to evoke emotional responses. A mechanical performance of the same piece served as a control. Before and after fMRI scanning, participants reported real-time emotional responses on a 2-dimensional rating scale (arousal and valence) as they listened to each performance. During fMRI scanning, participants listened without reporting emotional responses. Limbic and paralimbic brain areas responded to the expressive dynamics of human music performance, and both emotion and reward related activations during music listening were dependent upon musical training. Moreover, dynamic changes in timing predicted ratings of emotional arousal, as well as real-time changes in neural activity. BOLD signal changes correlated with expressive timing fluctuations in cortical and subcortical motor areas consistent with pulse perception, and in a network consistent with the human mirror neuron system. These findings show that expressive music performance evokes emotion and reward related neural activations, and that music's affective impact on the brains of listeners is altered by musical training. Our observations are consistent with the idea that music performance evokes an emotional response through a form of empathy that is based, at least in part, on the perception of movement and on violations of pulse-based temporal expectancies

Interoception in anxiety and depression

We review the literature on interoception as it relates to depression and anxiety, with a focus on belief, and alliesthesia. The connection between increased but noisy afferent interoceptive input, self-referential and belief-based states, and top-down modulation of poorly predictive signals is integrated into a neuroanatomical and processing model for depression and anxiety. The advantage of this conceptualization is the ability to specifically examine the interface between basic interoception, self-referential belief-based states, and enhanced top-down modulation to attenuate poor predictability. We conclude that depression and anxiety are not simply interoceptive disorders but are altered interoceptive states as a consequence of noisily amplified self-referential interoceptive predictive belief states

Neuroimaging to predict preclinical Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is common in the elderly and causes tremendous distress to patients and their carers. With the advent of newer pharmacological treatments, significant improvement in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is required. This article examines the usefulness of neuroimaging techniques to predict Alzheimer's disease in prediagnosis individuals. </jats:p