Musical harmonies and its relationship with emotional processing: An ERP study in young adults

Music has been used to express and communicate emotional states through its different dimensions such as tone, rhythm, melody, and harmony. Consonant harmonies consistently are rated as pleasant whereas dissonant are considered unpleasant. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of consonant and dissonant musical harmonies used as prime on the emotional classification of images, as indexed by event-related potentials. Thirty volunteers (ages 21–27, 50 % women) were presented with a task consisting of 4 musical intervals in the C major scale, divided into consonant and dissonant harmonies, followed by 180 positive, negative, or neutral images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Participants had to rate the images as pleasant or unpleasant. We found a bias effect on negative images rated as positive when preceded by a consonant musical interval. A N200 component, non-sensible to the valence of the images, was found. On the other hand, a significant difference was found in the amplitude of the P300 component, with a greater amplitude in the consonant-positive images condition compared to the dissonant-positive images. Lastly, a late positivity component around 500–700 ms was found in both negative conditions dissonant and consonant, but with a larger amplitude for the consonant condition when followed by a negative image. These results indicate that additionally to the P300 processing the relevance of the stimulus there are processes like recognition memory involved. As part of the novelty effect this late positive activity may also be related to the emotional content integration of the relevant stimulus.