Localizing Music’s “Language of Emotion” in the Human Brain: A Functional MRI Study of Scale and Emotion Processing

Objective: The great mystery of music is the unique manner in which it is able to convey emotion. Its most domain-specific mechanism for doing so is tonality, most notably scale structure. Music’s tonal structure creates a “language of emotion” whereby different scale types connote differences in emotional interpretation. In order to explore the neural basis of music’s language of emotion, we carried out a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Method: Trained musicians (n = 31) were tasked with discriminating the musical scale used in melodic samples, as well as the emotion conveyed by these samples, where the samples differed in the scale used (either major, minor, or chromatic). This was compared with a speech prosody condition in which participants had to discriminate the emotion conveyed in spoken utterances. Results: This comparison revealed the importance of regions that are little described in the neuromusic literature, namely, the lateral frontopolar cortex (Brodmann area 10/46) and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (area 32/8). Conclusions: The lateral frontopolar cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex contribute to the perception of emotional meaning in music, as conveyed through scale structure.