Music constitutes an ideal means to create a sense of suspense in films. Howev er, there has been minimal investigation into the underlying cerebral organizati on for perceiving danger created by music. In comparison,...Music constitutes an ideal means to create a sense of suspense in films. Howev er, there has been minimal investigation into the underlying cerebral organizati on for perceiving danger created by music. In comparison, the amygdala’s role i n recognition of fear in non-musical contexts has been well established. The pr esent study sought to fill this gap in exploring how patients with amygdala rese ction recognize emotional expression in music.To this aim, we tested 16 patients with left (LTR; n=8) or right (RTR; n=8) medial temporal resection (including a mygdala) for the relief of medically intractable seizures and 16 matched control s in an emotion recognition task involving instrumental music. The musical selec tions were purposely created to induce fear, peacefulness, happiness and sadness .Participants were asked to rate to what extent each musical passage expressed t hese four emotions on 10-point scales. In order to check for the presence of a perceptual problem, the same musical selections were presented to the participan ts in an error detection task. None of the patients was found to perform below c ontrols in the perceptual task. In contrast, both LTR and RTR patients were foun d to be impaired in the recognition of scary music. Recognition of happy and sad music was normal. These findings suggest that the anteromedial temporal lobe (i ncluding the amygdala) plays a role in the recognition of danger in a musical co ntext.展开更多
文摘Music constitutes an ideal means to create a sense of suspense in films. Howev er, there has been minimal investigation into the underlying cerebral organizati on for perceiving danger created by music. In comparison, the amygdala’s role i n recognition of fear in non-musical contexts has been well established. The pr esent study sought to fill this gap in exploring how patients with amygdala rese ction recognize emotional expression in music.To this aim, we tested 16 patients with left (LTR; n=8) or right (RTR; n=8) medial temporal resection (including a mygdala) for the relief of medically intractable seizures and 16 matched control s in an emotion recognition task involving instrumental music. The musical selec tions were purposely created to induce fear, peacefulness, happiness and sadness .Participants were asked to rate to what extent each musical passage expressed t hese four emotions on 10-point scales. In order to check for the presence of a perceptual problem, the same musical selections were presented to the participan ts in an error detection task. None of the patients was found to perform below c ontrols in the perceptual task. In contrast, both LTR and RTR patients were foun d to be impaired in the recognition of scary music. Recognition of happy and sad music was normal. These findings suggest that the anteromedial temporal lobe (i ncluding the amygdala) plays a role in the recognition of danger in a musical co ntext.
