CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-013, Lisbon, Portugal.
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2022 Oct;22(5):1044-1062. doi: 10.3758/s13415-022-01007-x. Epub 2022 May 3.
Music training has been linked to facilitated processing of emotional sounds. However, most studies have focused on speech, and less is known about musicians' brain responses to other emotional sounds and in relation to instrument-specific experience. The current study combined behavioral and EEG methods to address two novel questions related to the perception of auditory emotional cues: whether and how long-term music training relates to a distinct emotional processing of nonverbal vocalizations and music; and whether distinct training profiles (vocal vs. instrumental) modulate brain responses to emotional sounds from early to late processing stages. Fifty-eight participants completed an EEG implicit emotional processing task, in which musical and vocal sounds differing in valence were presented as nontarget stimuli. After this task, participants explicitly evaluated the same sounds regarding the emotion being expressed, their valence, and arousal. Compared with nonmusicians, musicians displayed enhanced salience detection (P2), attention orienting (P3), and elaborative processing (Late Positive Potential) of musical (vs. vocal) sounds in event-related potential (ERP) data. The explicit evaluation of musical sounds also was distinct in musicians: accuracy in the emotional recognition of musical sounds was similar across valence types in musicians, who also judged musical sounds to be more pleasant and more arousing than nonmusicians. Specific profiles of music training (singers vs. instrumentalists) did not relate to differences in the processing of vocal vs. musical sounds. Together, these findings reveal that music has a privileged status in the auditory system of long-term musically trained listeners, irrespective of their instrument-specific experience.
音乐训练与情感声音处理的促进有关。然而，大多数研究都集中在言语上，对于音乐家对其他情感声音的大脑反应以及与特定乐器经验的关系知之甚少。本研究结合行为和 EEG 方法，解决了与听觉情感线索感知相关的两个新问题：长期音乐训练是否以及如何与非言语人声和音乐的独特情感处理有关；以及不同的训练模式（声乐与器乐）是否会调节从早期到晚期处理阶段对情感声音的大脑反应。58 名参与者完成了一项 EEG 内隐情感处理任务，其中呈现了具有不同情感效价的音乐和人声作为非目标刺激。在这项任务之后，参与者对相同的声音进行了明确的评估，包括表达的情感、效价和唤醒度。与非音乐家相比，音乐家在事件相关电位（ERP）数据中表现出对音乐（与人声相比）声音的更高的显著性检测（P2）、注意力定向（P3）和细致处理（晚期正电位）。音乐家对音乐声音的明确评估也有所不同：音乐家对音乐声音的情感识别准确性在不同效价类型之间相似，他们还判断音乐声音比非音乐家更令人愉悦和更具唤醒性。具体的音乐训练模式（歌手与器乐演奏者）与人声与音乐声音的处理差异无关。总之，这些发现表明，音乐在长期受过音乐训练的听众的听觉系统中具有特殊地位，而不论其特定乐器的经验如何。
