Music Aesthetics
It is commonly known that music can elicit extremely pleasant sensations - euphoric responses described as "shivers down the spine", "chills" and "thrills of joy" have been repeatedly reported. However, there are interindividual differences when it comes to the type of music which elicits these kinds of reactions. Evaluative mental processes that yield an aesthetical judgement play an important role (in determining individual reactions to music). Researchers dedicated to the study of Empirical Aesthetics strive to answer the ancient question: why do individuals consider some things beautiful and some things hideous? And what object characteristics determine their judgements? Within the scope of the Neuro-Aesthetics of Music (a branch of the Empirical Aesthetics), the neuronal mechanisms of the aesthetical evaluation process of musical stimuli are studied, applying modern psychological and neuroscientific methods.
The current research project is subdivided into smaller consecutive studies. In a first exploratory study, the aesthetical concepts of music experts and music laymen are of interest. What kind of adjectives do individuals use when they talk about music? How do they communicate their opinion about a musical piece? How do humans verbally express the aesthetical concepts they apply for music evaluation? To answer these questions, a questionnaire will be developed and employed to learn more about the terminology used to describe the aesthetical value of music. Further, music experts' verbal associations of music aesthetics will be compared to those of music laymen.
In a continuative study, we aim to extract specific characteristics of the aesthetical evaluation process by recording and analysing Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). Two types of trials will be performed while monitoring brain activity for specific differences: one in which individuals analyse certain descriptive properties of a musical excerpt, and a second in which individuals are instructed to form a judgement about the aesthetical value of the same excerpt. Employing the ERP-technique allows for a greater insight into aesthetical processing and specific hypotheses can be tested. For example, bearing in mind results from former studies documenting the dominance of the left hemisphere in analytic processing, there is reason to expect laterality effects.
The Leipzig research project "The Neuro-Aesthetics of Music" is part of the project Brain Tuning, funded by the European Commission. Within this project (2006-2009) six cooperating groups of researchers in Europe and Canada will use the possibilities provided by neuroscientific methodology to study music processing and musically induced emotions in the human brain.