Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, 6525 EN, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Aug 16;14(1):19048. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-70027-z.
Aesthetic preference is intricately linked to learning and creativity. Previous studies have largely examined the perception of novelty in terms of pleasantness and the generation of novelty via creativity separately. The current study examines the connection between perception and generation of novelty in music; specifically, we investigated how pleasantness judgements and brain responses to musical notes of varying probability (estimated by a computational model of auditory expectation) are linked to learning and creativity. To facilitate learning de novo, 40 non-musicians were trained on an unfamiliar artificial music grammar. After learning, participants evaluated the pleasantness of the final notes of melodies, which varied in probability, while their EEG was recorded. They also composed their own musical pieces using the learned grammar which were subsequently assessed by experts. As expected, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between liking and probability: participants were more likely to rate the notes with intermediate probabilities as pleasant. Further, intermediate probability notes elicited larger N100 and P200 at posterior and frontal sites, respectively, associated with prediction error processing. Crucially, individuals who produced less creative compositions preferred higher probability notes, whereas individuals who composed more creative pieces preferred notes with intermediate probability. Finally, evoked brain responses to note probability were relatively independent of learning and creativity, suggesting that these higher-level processes are not mediated by brain responses related to performance monitoring. Overall, our findings shed light on the relationship between perception and generation of novelty, offering new insights into aesthetic preference and its neural correlates.
审美偏好与学习和创造力密切相关。先前的研究主要从愉悦感的角度研究新奇感的感知，以及通过创造力产生新奇感。本研究考察了音乐中新奇感的感知和产生之间的联系；具体来说，我们研究了音乐音符的愉悦感判断和大脑反应（通过听觉期望的计算模型估计）与学习和创造力之间的关系。为了促进新的学习，40 名非音乐家接受了一种不熟悉的人工音乐语法的训练。学习后，参与者评估了旋律的最后音符的愉悦感，这些音符的概率不同，同时记录他们的 EEG。他们还使用所学的语法创作了自己的音乐作品，随后由专家进行评估。正如预期的那样，喜好和概率之间存在着倒 U 形关系：参与者更有可能将中等概率的音符评为愉悦。此外，中等概率的音符在前部和后部位置分别诱发更大的 N100 和 P200，分别与预测误差处理有关。至关重要的是，产生较少创造性作品的个体更喜欢较高概率的音符，而创作更多创造性作品的个体更喜欢中等概率的音符。最后，对音符概率的诱发脑反应与学习和创造力相对独立，表明这些高级别过程不受与绩效监测相关的大脑反应的影响。总的来说，我们的发现揭示了新奇感的感知和产生之间的关系，为审美偏好及其神经相关性提供了新的见解。
