Oscillatory Activity during the Processing of Musically Induced Emotions

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate neuroelectric oscillatory activity during the processing of emotions. Drawing on studies showing that (a) music is capable of inducing strong emotions in listeners (Krumhansl, 1997) and (b) dissonance is associated with unpleasant experiences while consonance is perceived as pleasant (Blood et al., 1999), a newly developed experimental paradigm (Koelsch et al., 2004) was applied. Listeners were presented with excerpts (1min length each) of joyful (consonant) dance tunes of the past 4 centuries and electronically manipulated unpleasant (dissonant) counterpa…