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Effects of Sad and Happy Music on Mind-Wandering and the Default Mode Network

Taruffi, L.; Pehrs, C.; Skouras, S.; Koelsch, S.

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Authors

C. Pehrs

S. Skouras

S. Koelsch



Abstract

Music is a ubiquitous phenomenon in human cultures, mostly due to its power to evoke and regulate emotions. However, effects of music evoking different emotional experiences such as sadness and happiness on cognition, and in particular on self-generated thought, are unknown. Here we use probe-caught thought sampling and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the influence of sad and happy music on mind-wandering and its underlying neuronal mechanisms. In three experiments we found that sad music, compared with happy music, is associated with stronger mind-wandering (Experiments 1A and 1B) and greater centrality of the nodes of the Default Mode Network (DMN) (Experiment 2). Thus, our results demonstrate that, when listening to sad vs. happy music, people withdraw their attention inwards and engage in spontaneous, self-referential cognitive processes. Importantly, our results also underscore that DMN activity can be modulated as a function of sad and happy music. These findings call for a systematic investigation of the relation between music and thought, having broad implications for the use of music in education and clinical settings.

Citation

Taruffi, L., Pehrs, C., Skouras, S., & Koelsch, S. (2017). Effects of Sad and Happy Music on Mind-Wandering and the Default Mode Network. Scientific Reports, 7(1), Article 14396. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14849-0

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 17, 2017
Online Publication Date Oct 31, 2017
Publication Date Oct 31, 2017
Deposit Date Jan 17, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 5, 2020
Journal Scientific Reports
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 1
Article Number 14396
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14849-0

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.




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