The Affective Cerebral Consequence of Music: Happy vs Sad Effects on the EEG and Clinical Implications

Author(s): Bekkedal, M. Y. V.

Journal/Book: International Journal of Arts Medicine. 1997; 5:

Abstract: Music has been used in the treatment of mood and other psychiatric disorders, but little systematic research has been conducted to determine how emotions encoded in music modify brain activities. In the present study, the electroencephalograph was used to measure neural responses related to passages of emotionally salient music. Differences in brain activity changes in response to happy and sad music were measured using the Event-Related Desynchronization-Synchronization (ERD-ERS) procedure. Responses to the two types of music could be only modestly differentiated with respect to the overall arousal of the cortex (with sad music generally arousing the cortex more than happy music, especially in females). Since comparable EEG changes could be evoked by nonmusical auditory stimuli, these data do not allow for definitive conclusions concerning affective representations in the cortical EEG. Methodological insights for future investigations in the study of music and emotions are detailed.

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