Investigations of neurophysiological correlates of the perception of harmony and poliphonic melodies using ASSRs in MEG.

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26330316
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Kansei informatics
• Research Institution: Tokyo Denki University
• Principal Investigator: Nemoto Iku 東京電機大学, 情報環境学部, 教授 (40105672)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 脳磁図 / 聴性定常応答 / 和声 / 多声部音楽 / 多義的旋律

Outline of Final Research Achievements

ASSRs in MEG were used to investigate the neurophysiological correlates of harmony recognition and melody recognition especially in polyphonic music. Different tones can be modulated by different frequencies and thus the responses to tones presented simultaneously can be separately measured, which makes ASSR a suitable technique for harmony and polyphonic music recognition. The degree of dissonance of chords was found to be reflected by ASSR amplitudes which also depended on the constituent tones of each type of chords. This result may be further extended to formulate some sort of correlation diagram of chords in terms of neural responses. As regards polyphonic music recognition, we devised ambiguous music consisting of three voices. We found different ASSRs to the same ambiguous music depending on the interpretation of the music by the listener. This result suggested a neurophysiological method of melody recognition using ASSRs.

Free Research Field

音楽脳機能工学