Παρασκευή 6 Νοεμβρίου 2015

The influence of Mozart's sonata K.448 on visual attention: An ERPs study


  • a Mind, Art and Computation Lab, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, School of Information Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China
  • b Institute of Linguistics, Xuzhou Normal University, Xuzhou, 221116, China
  • c Key Lab of Linguistics Sciences & Neuro-cognition Engineering, Jiangsu Province, 221116, China
  • d College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China
  • e Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China
Received 31 August 2007, Revised 6 January 2008, Accepted 8 January 2008, Available online 21 January 2008

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2008.01.043
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Abstract

In the present study, the effects of Mozart's sonata K.448 on voluntary and involuntary attention were investigated by recording and analyzing behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs) data in a three-stimulus visual oddball task. P3a (related to involuntary attention) and P3b (related to voluntary attention) were analyzed. The “Mozart effect” was showed on ERP but not on behavioral data. This study replicated the previous results of Mozart effect on voluntary attention: the P3b latency was influenced by Mozart's sonata K.448. But no change of P3a latency was induced by this music. At the same time, decreased P3a and P3b amplitudes in music condition were found. We interpret this change as positive “Mozart effect” on involuntary attention (P3a) and negative “Mozart effect” on voluntary attention (P3b). We conclude that Mozart's sonata K.448 has shown certain effects on both involuntary attention and voluntary attention in our study, but their effects work on different mechanisms.

Keywords

The effects of both long-term musical training and short-term musical exposure on cognition have been researched by cognitive neuroscientists [1], [2], [3], [6], [7], [8], [12], [13], [16], [22] and [24]. One of the most oft-cited phenomena in this area is the so-called ‘Mozart effect’ first reported by Rauscher et al. [20], showing an improvement in the spatial-temporal reasoning ability of participants after listening to a piece of Mozart’ s music (especially Mozart's sonata K.448) [19] and [20]. The Mozart effect was explained by Trion model of cortical organization [14], [25] and [26]. However, several alternative accounts relating to music enjoyment, arousal and mood have been put forward to explain the ‘Mozart effect’ [4], [15], [27], [28] and [29]. For example, enjoying a piece by Schubert or a short story enhanced subject's performance just as Mozart's music did [15] and [29].
Although there are still some conflicting viewpoints on Mozart effect, more and more researches have demonstrated that besides the influence on spatial-temporal reasoning ability, Mozart's music have positive or negative effects on other cognition activities [9] and [11]. On the other hand, there have been a lot of studies into the effect of music on attention [6], [21], [23], [28] and [31]. However, the effect of Mozart music on attention has not been studied thoroughly. For instance, Jausovec and Habe's study tested the Mozart effect on attention, showing that Mozart's sonata K.448 could influence visual brain activity [10]. However, they put the experiment focus only on voluntary attention. To date, no study on the Mozart effect on involuntary attention has been reported.
Based on the excellent temporal resolution of neural events, event-related potentials (ERPs) have been regarded as neural manifestations of specific cognition functions, reflecting brain activity from synchronously active populations of neurons. In Jausovec and Habe's study [10], the Mozart effect was tested by a P300 component elicited by targets, i.e., P3b, in the oddball paradigm, which was commonly used to study voluntary attention. However, we adopted the “three-stimulus” paradigm to investigate attention, in which “distractor” stimuli were inserted into the sequence of target and standard stimuli. When “distractor” stimuli were presented in the series of the more ”typical” target and standard stimuli, a P300 component could be produced largely over the frontal/central areas. This “distractor” P300 was called “P3a”, and the parietal maximum P300 from the target stimulus “P3b” [18]. P3a derived from stimulus-driven frontal attention mechanisms during task processing, whereas P3b originated from temporal-parietal activity associated with voluntary attention and subsequent memory processing [18].
The aim of the present study was further investigated the influence of auditory background stimulation (Mozart's music) on both visual voluntary and involuntary attention by recording and analyzing P3a and P3b during a visual three-stimulus oddball task.
We first conducted Experiment 1, in which the comparison of Mozart's music and silence backgrounds was run. Sixteen right-handed subjects completed the experiment (eight females). Their mean age is 22.8 years (S.D. = 1.3355, range 20–25 years). All subjects are reared in China and educated in formal Universities. Subjects reported no history of neurological disease and reported normal hearing and normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Each subject was given written consent to participation after being informed of the procedure of the experiment. The subjects were paid for the experiment.
A three-stimulus visual oddball task was presented on a computer screen positioned approximately 100 cm in front of the subjects. It consisted of infrequent target stimuli (reversed triangle P = 0.15) frequent standard stimuli (triangle P = 0.7) and infrequent distractor stimuli (random lines P = 0.15, see Fig. 1). The experimental session consisted of four blocks of one hundred trials, presented at an inter-stimulus interval of 900–1100 ms. In each case, the subject was instructed to press a button (half subjects used right thumbs and the other half left thumbs) in response to the target stimulus and not to respond otherwise. Subjects’ EEG was recorded in two conditions: (1) music condition (MC) when they were listening to Mozart's sonata K.448 and (2) silence condition (SC) when they were listening to nothing. The conditions were rotated between subjects, so that half of the subjects started with MC followed by SC, while a reverse distribution of conditions was used for the other half of subjects. The sound backgrounds were presented via headphones (60 dB). To familiarize subjects with the task, several examples were tried before the actual experiment.
Stimuli figures: (A) target stimuli; (B) standard stimuli; (C) example of ...
Fig. 1. 
Stimuli figures: (A) target stimuli; (B) standard stimuli; (C) example of distractor stimuli.
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The subjects were seated in a quiet room and fitted with a Quik-Cap (Neuroscan, USA). Electroencephalograms were recorded from 64 channels based on the international 10–20 system. The montage included eight midline sites (FPZ; FZ; FCZ; CZ; CPZ; PZ; POZ; OZ), 27 sites over the left hemisphere (FP1; AF3; F1; F3; F5; F7; FC1; FC3; FC5; FT7; C1; C3; C5; T7; CP1; CP3; CP5; TP7; P1; P3; P5; P7; PO3; PO5; PO7; O1; CB1), and 27 sites over the right hemisphere (FP2; AF4; F1; F4; F6; F8; FC2; FC4; FC6; FT8; C2; C4; C6; T8; CP2; CP4; CP6; TP8; P2; P4; P6; P8; PO4; PO6; PO8; O2; CB2). Left and right mastoids were used as reference electrodes. Eye movements and blinks were monitored by electrodes placed near the outer canthus of each eye called horizontal-electrooculograms (HEOG), and above and below the left eye called vertical-electrooculograms (VEOG). Inter-electrode impedance levels were kept below 5 kΩ.
During the experiment, the EEG was continuously recorded with a 0.05–100 Hz analog band pass and a sampling rate of 1000 Hz. After completing data collection, the EEG was segmented into 1200-ms epochs beginning 200 ms prior to stimulus onset. Epochs contaminated with artifacts (threshold for artifact rejection was ±80 μV in all channels) were rejected before averaging. The EEG was averaged for non-target, target and distractor stimuli separately. The ERP was digitally filtered with a band pass of 0.1–30 Hz prior to peak detection.
The target stimuli mean reaction time and accuracy were tested by a MANOVA design for repeated measure in two conditions (music vs. silence). Although the reaction time in music condition (M = 431.8 ms, S.D. = 45.4) longer than in silence condition (M = 416.2 ms, S.D. = 31.7), this difference was not significant (F(1, 15) = 2.309, P = 0.149). The mean accuracy in music condition was 0.977 (S.D. = 0.018) and in silence condition was 0.974 (S.D. = 0.024), F(1, 15) = 184, P = 0.674.
As shown in Fig. 2, in both silence and music conditions, we observed a positive component called “P3b” [18] peaking at about 390 ms after target stimuli onset as well as “P3a”, a relative smaller and earlier positive component around 370 ms after distractor stimuli onset [18], whereas the standard stimuli did not elicit clear P300 component. In order to assess whether the presentation of the Mozart's sonata had any effect on voluntary attention (P3b) and involuntary attention (P3a), the data from the target and distractor stimuli were analyzed separately. The amplitudes and latencies of the ERP components were analyzed by a MANOVA design for repeated measures with three factors: Condition (two levels: K.448, silence), Brain site (three levels: frontal, central, parietal) and Lateralization (three levels: left, midline, right). Greenhouse ± Geisser correction was applied to MANOVA results.
(a) Grand average waveforms from nine electrodes in silence condition (left) and ...
Fig. 2. 
(a) Grand average waveforms from nine electrodes in silence condition (left) and music condition (right) for standard stimuli (grayish line), target stimuli (black line) and distractor stimuli (gray line) and (b) their topographic maps.
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Fig. 3 showed the grand average waveform for distracter and target stimuli in music and silence condition. For P3b amplitude, across two conditions it was distributed over central/parietal sites, F(2, 30) = 27.03, P < 0.001, with the greatest amplitude in midline (M = 13.9 μV, S.D. = 4.83) and without significant difference between left (M = 12.8 μV, S.D. = 4.06) and right (M = 13.0 μV, S.D. = 5.19) hemispheres, F(2, 30) = 3.822, P = 0.033. The main effect of Condition was not significant, F(1, 15) = 3.707, P = 0.073, 12.6 μV for music and 13.9 μV for silence backgrounds, respectively. The interaction of Condition by Brain site showed a significant decrease of amplitude in music condition compared with the silence condition in parietal (mean difference between music and silence condition: −1.371 μV) and central-parietal (mean difference between music and silence condition: −1.638 μV) areas, F(2, 30) = 3.153, P < 0.001. For P3b peak latencies, only an interaction effect of Condition by Lateralization, F(2, 30) = 5.048, P = 0.04, was found, reflecting that in the music condition, latency in the left hemisphere was increased (mean difference between music and silence condition: 13.24 ms), whereas in the right hemisphere decreased (mean difference between music and silence condition: −3.023 ms) as compared with the silence condition.
Grand average waveforms from nine electrodes for the (a) distractor stimuli ...
Fig. 3. 
Grand average waveforms from nine electrodes for the (a) distractor stimuli (P3a) and (b) target stimuli (P3b) in two conditions: silence (gray dot line) and K.448 (black line).
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For P3a amplitude, significant main effects of Condition (F(1, 15) = 5.43, P = 0.034) and Brain site (F(2, 30) = 17.55, P < 0.001) were found, respectively, mainly indicating a reduction of P3a amplitude in music condition (M = 5.98 μV, S.D. = 3.16) than in silence condition (M = 7.29 μV, S.D. = 3.23). There were no other significant main effects and interactions. Moreover, although P3a had a longer latency in frontal areas than in other brain areas, F(2, 30) = 6.754, P < 0.001, it was significantly delayed in left hemisphere (M = 373.4 ms, S.D. = 50.91) than in right hemisphere (M = 388.7 ms, S.D. = 47.96), F(2, 30) = 6.36, P = 0.023. There were no main effect of Condition and other interactions for P3a latency.
In Experiment 1, the behavior data did not show the beneficial effect of Mozart's sonata K.448 on the visual three-stimulus oddball task. One possible explanation for this absence of difference between music and silence conditions might be the difficulty of replicating the behavioral effect of Mozart's music as some studies have indicated [27]. Another possible explanation is the ceiling effect: subjects discriminated target at a high accuracy in both conditions (music condition: 0.977; silence condition: 0.974), that is, the oddball task is too easy to show the effect of music.
The results of ERP showed that both the P3b and P3a elicited in the oddball task are different between music and silence conditions. It maybe argue that is there something particularly engaging about the Mozart's sonata K.448 or is the distraction effect due to just the presence of a second stimulus condition—sound. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted Experiment 2 to compare the effect between another sound condition and silence condition.
In Experiment 2, the procedure and recording were the same as in Experiment 1 and the repeated playing of the chromatic scales was used to replace the Mozart's K.448 as the sound background. We called the sound condition in Experiment 2 as “Scale condition” and that in Experiment 1 as “K.448 condition”. Thirteen subjects took part in Experiment 2.
Fig. 4 showed the P3a and P3b difference between silence condition and sound condition in Experiment 1 (“K.448 condition”) and Experiment 2 (“Scale condition”), respectively. The amplitudes and latencies of the P3b and P3a were analyzed the same way as in Experiment 1. Different from the comparison of Mozart's sonata K.448 versus silence conditions in Experiment 1, MANOVA of Condition (two levels: chromatic scale, silence) by Brain site (three levels: frontal, central, parietal) by Lateralization (three levels: left, midline, right) did not show any main effects and interactions for P3a as well as P3b, suggesting that the chromatic scales has no effect on visual voluntary and involuntary attention.
Grand average waveforms for the (a) distractor stimuli (P3a) and (b) target ...
Fig. 4. 
Grand average waveforms for the (a) distractor stimuli (P3a) and (b) target stimuli (P3b) of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 in sound condition (black line) and in silence condition (gray line).
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Moreover, we further compared the performance of the silence condition in Experiment 1 against the silence condition in Experiment 2. There are not significant difference of peak amplitude and latency, regardless of P3a or P3b (P > 0.1). It indicated that the results of our experiments are stable: the performance of this task does not change between different groups of subjects. Thus the comparisons between two experiments are reliable.
Since the amplitude of P3b generally is interpreted as the reflection of voluntary attention [17], the smaller P3b amplitude in music condition can be explained that listening to Mozart's sonata has led to a negative effect on voluntary attention, and these effects are significant in the areas where P3b is mainly distributed (parietal/central-parietal areas). However, another interpretation could be that music has simply increased the workload of cognition [10], in another word, it is the sound effect on the amplitude of P3b rather than Mozart effect. But the results of our supplemented Experiment 2 ruled out that possibility (see Fig. 4(b)). Unlike the results in Experiment 1, there is not significant difference between music and silence conditions. We can conclude that the smaller amplitude of Mozart's sonata K.448 was not due to the presence of a second stimulus condition—sound. Hence, we confirm the first interpretation that listening to Mozart's sonata has led to a negative effect on voluntary attention.
At the same time, our experiment showed decreased P3a in Mozart's sonata condition compared with silence condition. P3a is suggested to reflect an involuntary attention switch towards the distraction [5]. And the reduced P3a amplitude was interpreted as evidence for a better voluntarily control over the involuntary distraction [30]. Likewise, the decreased P3a in music condition in our study may be explained as the positive effect of Mozart on involuntary attention. Subjects have better voluntarily control over the distraction while listening to Mozart's sonata K.448. Another possible explanation for the reduced P3a in music condition is that simply music has captured subject involuntary attention [6], namely the sound background increased the workload of cognition. Again, this interpretation was ruled out since the amplitude of P3a in Experiment 2 was similar in both conditions (see Fig. 4(a)). And this result further proved the musical effect rather than the sound effect.
The change of P3b latency in music condition compared with silence condition is consistent with a previous study [10]: P3b increased in the left hemisphere, whereas it decreased in the right hemisphere. Their interpretation was that the music condition required subjects to process more sensory input than did the silence condition, and this increase in cognitive workload was also reflected in neurophysiological differences in brain activity [10]. Since the results of Experiment 2 did not show this change between repeated playing chromatic scales and silence, the explanation of increased workload of sound is groundless. We infer that the change of P3b latency comes from the effect of Mozart's music rather than sound effect.
On the other hand, different from P3b, no musical effects were found on the P3a latency. And the data of control group showed no difference between music condition and silence condition either. Given that P300 latency is an index of the processing time and that it provides a temporal measure of the neural activity underlying the processes of attention allocation and immediate memory [18], our study has shown no effects of either Mozart's music or sound on the processing time of involuntary attention.
Our study finds the “Mozart effect” on the three-stimulus visual oddball task was showed in ERP but not in behavioral performance. Although the changes of P3a and P3b amplitude were the same, they represented different effects of Mozart's sonata K.448: positive effect on involuntary attention and negative effect on voluntary attention. Our study also replicated the previous studies of Mozart effect on voluntary attention in Chinese subjects: the P3b latency was influence by Mozart’ sonata K.448. But no change of P3a latency was induced by Mozart's music. In conclusion, both involuntary attention and voluntary attention in our research shows the effect of Mozart's sonata K.448, but their effects work on different mechanisms.

Acknowledgement

The project is supported by the High Technology Research and Development Program (863) of China (No. 2006AA01Z129).

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