Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure

Farrugia, N.; Jakubowski, Kelly; Cusack, R.; Stewart, L.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2015.04.020

Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure

Farrugia, N.; Jakubowski, Kelly; Cusack, R.; Stewart, L.

Authors

N. Farrugia

Dr Kelly Jakubowski kelly.jakubowski@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

R. Cusack

L. Stewart

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the neuroscience of spontaneous cognition. One form of such cognition is involuntary musical imagery (INMI), the non-pathological and everyday experience of having music in one’s head, in the absence of an external stimulus. In this study, aspects of INMI, including frequency and affective evaluation, were measured by self-report in 44 subjects and related to variation in brain structure in these individuals. Frequency of INMI was related to cortical thickness in regions of right frontal and temporal cortices as well as the anterior cingulate and left angular gyrus. Affective aspects of INMI, namely the extent to which subjects wished to suppress INMI or considered them helpful, were related to gray matter volume in right temporopolar and parahippocampal cortices respectively. These results provide the first evidence that INMI is a common internal experience recruiting brain networks involved in perception, emotions, memory and spontaneous thoughts.

Citation

Farrugia, N., Jakubowski, K., Cusack, R., & Stewart, L. (2015). Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure. Consciousness and Cognition, 35, 66-77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.04.020

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	May 15, 2015
Publication Date	Sep 1, 2015
Deposit Date	May 23, 2016
Publicly Available Date	Jun 21, 2016
Journal	Consciousness and Cognition
Print ISSN	1053-8100
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	35
Pages	66-77
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2015.04.020

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).