Title: Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity
Abstract: Listening to music often evokes intense emotions [1Koelsch S. Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions.Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2014; 15: 170-180Crossref PubMed Scopus (553) Google Scholar, 2Juslin P.N. Västfjäll D. Emotional responses to music: the need to consider underlying mechanisms.Behav. Brain Sci. 2008; 31: 559-575, discussion 575–621Crossref PubMed Scopus (976) Google Scholar]. Recent research suggests that musical pleasure comes from positive reward prediction errors, which arise when what is heard proves to be better than expected [3Salimpoor V.N. Zald D.H. Zatorre R.J. Dagher A. McIntosh A.R. Predictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding.Trends Cogn. Sci. 2015; 19: 86-91Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (171) Google Scholar]. Central to this view is the engagement of the nucleus accumbens—a brain region that processes reward expectations—to pleasurable music and surprising musical events [4Salimpoor V.N. van den Bosch I. Kovacevic N. McIntosh A.R. Dagher A. Zatorre R.J. Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music reward value.Science. 2013; 340: 216-219Crossref PubMed Scopus (363) Google Scholar, 5Mueller K. Fritz T. Mildner T. Richter M. Schulze K. Lepsien J. Schroeter M.L. Möller H.E. Investigating the dynamics of the brain response to music: a central role of the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens.Neuroimage. 2015; 116: 68-79Crossref PubMed Scopus (33) Google Scholar, 6Shany O. Singer N. Gold B.P. Jacoby N. Tarrasch R. Hendler T. Granot R. Surprise-related activation in the nucleus accumbens interacts with music-induced pleasantness.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2019; 14: 459-470Crossref PubMed Scopus (24) Google Scholar, 7Gold B.P. Mas-Herrero E. Zeighami Y. Benovoy M. Dagher A. Zatorre R.J. Musical reward prediction errors engage the nucleus accumbens and motivate learning.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2019; 116: 3310-3315Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar, 8Salimpoor V.N. Benovoy M. Larcher K. Dagher A. Zatorre R.J. Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.Nat. Neurosci. 2011; 14: 257-262Crossref PubMed Scopus (933) Google Scholar]. However, expectancy violations along multiple musical dimensions (e.g., harmony and melody) have failed to implicate the nucleus accumbens [9Koelsch S. Fritz T. Schulze K. Alsop D. Schlaug G. Adults and children processing music: an fMRI study.Neuroimage. 2005; 25: 1068-1076Crossref PubMed Scopus (267) Google Scholar, 10Royal I. Vuvan D.T. Zendel B.R. Robitaille N. Schönwiesner M. Peretz I. Activation in the right inferior parietal lobule reflects the representation of musical structure beyond simple pitch discrimination.PLoS ONE. 2016; 11: e0155291Crossref PubMed Scopus (18) Google Scholar, 11Goupil L. Aucouturier J.-J. Musical pleasure and musical emotions.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2019; 116: 3364-3366Crossref PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar], and it is unknown how music reward value is assigned [12Hansen N.C. Dietz M.J. Vuust P. Commentary: predictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding.Front. Hum. Neurosci. 2017; 11: 168Crossref PubMed Scopus (15) Google Scholar]. Whether changes in musical expectancy elicit pleasure has thus remained elusive [11Goupil L. Aucouturier J.-J. Musical pleasure and musical emotions.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2019; 116: 3364-3366Crossref PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar]. Here, we demonstrate that pleasure varies nonlinearly as a function of the listener's uncertainty when anticipating a musical event, and the surprise it evokes when it deviates from expectations. Taking Western tonal harmony as a model of musical syntax, we used a machine-learning model [13Pearce M.T. Statistical learning and probabilistic prediction in music cognition: mechanisms of stylistic enculturation.Ann. N Y Acad. Sci. 2018; (Published online May 11, 2018)https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13654Crossref PubMed Scopus (65) Google Scholar] to mathematically quantify the uncertainty and surprise of 80,000 chords in US Billboard pop songs. Behaviorally, we found that chords elicited high pleasure ratings when they deviated substantially from what the listener had expected (low uncertainty, high surprise) or, conversely, when they conformed to expectations in an uninformative context (high uncertainty, low surprise). Neurally, we found using fMRI that activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, and auditory cortex reflected this interaction, while the nucleus accumbens only reflected uncertainty. These findings challenge current neurocognitive models of music-evoked pleasure and highlight the synergistic interplay between prospective and retrospective states of expectation in the musical experience.Video AbstracteyJraWQiOiI4ZjUxYWNhY2IzYjhiNjNlNzFlYmIzYWFmYTU5NmZmYyIsImFsZyI6IlJTMjU2In0.eyJzdWIiOiJmYjNmN2I3NTRhODdjZTI0YWMwODQwMzY2MzU5N2M5MyIsImtpZCI6IjhmNTFhY2FjYjNiOGI2M2U3MWViYjNhYWZhNTk2ZmZjIiwiZXhwIjoxNjc5MDE5NjA4fQ.d0N5iG8uVO1zT_CbTAo0gkJnZkOtEdBptTo-A41AQtf6lCEfTN4XxlIHwka7beB0IRB-KroJp3WvBUbGP2l_jqdYA6zYX-j9LfGGrf04PFNwQ2H1DZXxoJpwm1PzEimNuiWElvQ3ClIv2_w3fZBSQzRRQBW3FQf172zO2AnB7XWQPTAieleMMkGtFE46cvMLoWObbXG8yBxx_TWC2xI8WfZiMcHT_bXs2iOydIghBjaqoG7QIkRekMf1jzMQQI9DD5jsuKxZSIBBPxen0m8cQbnwGnPkFoDujzR35VxeHuPhMG5PoTXY34MdX5-oYf-isK41Dd9zX7V9UwRMuu-t5g(mp4, (55.99 MB) Download video