Mencke Iris, Omigie Diana, Wald-Fuhrmann Melanie, Brattico Elvira
Department of Music, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany.
Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark.
Front Neurosci. 2019 Jan 8;12:979. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00979. eCollection 2018.
In recent years, the field of neuroaesthetics has gained considerable attention with music being a favored object of study. The majority of studies concerning music have, however, focused on the experience of Western tonal music (TM), which is characterized by tonal hierarchical organization, a high degree of consonance, and a tendency to provide the listener with a tonic as a reference point during the listening experience. We argue that a narrow focus on Western TM may have led to a one-sided view regarding the qualities of the aesthetic experience of music since Western art music from the 20th and 21st century like atonal music (AM) - while lacking a tonal hierarchical structure, and while being highly dissonant and hard to predict - is nevertheless enjoyed by a group of avid listeners. We propose a research focus that investigates, in particular, the experience of AM as a novel and compelling way with which to enhance our understanding of both the aesthetic appreciation of music and the role of predictive models in the context of musical pleasure. We use music theoretical analysis and music information retrieval methods to demonstrate how AM presents the listener with a highly uncertain auditory environment. Specifically, an analysis of a corpus of 100 musical segments is used to illustrate how tonal classical music and AM differ quantitatively in terms of both key and pulse clarity values. We then examine person related, extrinsic and intrinsic factors, that point to potential mechanisms underlying the appreciation and pleasure derived from AM. We argue that personality traits like "openness to experience," the framing of AM as art, and the mere exposure effect are key components of such mechanisms. We further argue that neural correlates of uncertainty estimation could represent a central mechanism for engaging with AM and that such contexts engender a comparatively weak predictive model in the listener. Finally we argue that in such uncertain contexts, correct predictions may be more subjectively rewarding than prediction errors since they signal to the individual that their predictive model is improving.
近年来，神经美学领域备受关注，音乐成为了热门研究对象。然而，大多数关于音乐的研究都集中在西方调性音乐（TM）的体验上，这种音乐的特点是具有调性层次结构、高度和谐，并且在聆听体验中倾向于为听众提供一个主音作为参考点。我们认为，对西方调性音乐的狭隘关注可能导致了对音乐审美体验品质的片面看法，因为20世纪和21世纪的西方艺术音乐，如无调性音乐（AM）——虽然缺乏调性层次结构，高度不和谐且难以预测——但仍受到一群狂热听众的喜爱。我们提出了一个研究重点，特别研究无调性音乐的体验，以此作为一种新颖且引人注目的方式，来加深我们对音乐审美欣赏以及预测模型在音乐愉悦情境中作用的理解。我们使用音乐理论分析和音乐信息检索方法来证明无调性音乐如何为听众呈现一个高度不确定的听觉环境。具体而言，通过对100个音乐片段的语料库进行分析，来说明调性古典音乐和无调性音乐在调性和节奏清晰度值方面如何在数量上存在差异。然后，我们研究与个人相关的、外在和内在的因素，这些因素指向了从无调性音乐中获得欣赏和愉悦的潜在机制。我们认为，诸如“体验开放性”这样的人格特质、将无调性音乐视为艺术的框架以及单纯曝光效应是这些机制的关键组成部分。我们进一步认为，不确定性估计的神经关联可能代表了与无调性音乐互动的核心机制，并且这样的情境在听众中产生了相对较弱的预测模型。最后，我们认为在这种不确定的情境中，正确的预测可能比预测错误在主观上更具奖励性，因为它们向个体表明其预测模型正在改进。
