Biology subjects

Merrill, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Merrill, J..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Synchrony in the periphery: inter-subject correlation of physiological responses during live music concerts

A concert is a common event at which people gather to share a musical experience. While techniques are increasingly offering insights into naturalistic stimuli perception, this study extended methods to a more ecological context in order to explore real-world music listening within a concert setting. Cardiorespiratory, skin conductance, and facial muscle responses were measured from participants attending one of three concerts with live chamber music performances of works of varying Western Classical styles (Viennese Classical, Contemporary, and Romantic). Collective physiological synchronisation of audience members was operationalised via inter-subject correlation (ISC). By assessing which musical features (obtained via Music Information Retrieval and music-theoretical analyses) evoked moments of high synchrony, logistic regressions revealed that tempo consistently predicted physiological synchrony across all concerts in Classical and Romantic styles, but not the Contemporary style. Highly synchronised responses across all three concert audiences seemed to occur during structural transitional passages, boundaries, and at phrase repetitions. The results support the idea that group synchronisation is linked to musical arousal, structural coherence, and familiarity. By employing physiological ISC and an inter-disciplinary musical analysis, the current study demonstrates a novel approach to gain valuable insight into experiences of naturalistic stimuli in an ecological context.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the "perceived" than the "felt" task. This result suggested that the focus on ones self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the "felt" task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression.

neuroscience↗