Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated that the degree of aesthetic pleasure a person experiences correlates with the activation of reward functions in the brain. However, it is unclear whether different affective qualities and the perceptions of beauty that they evoke correspond to specific areas of brain activation. Major and minor musical keys induce two types of affective qualities—bright/happy and dark/sad—that both evoke aesthetic pleasure. In the present study, we used positron emission tomography to demonstrate that the two musical keys (major and minor) activate distinct brain areas. Minor consonant chords perceived as beautiful strongly activated the right striatum, which has been assumed to play an important role in reward and emotion processing, whereas major consonant chords perceived as beautiful induced significant activity in the left middle temporal gyrus, which is believed to be related to coherent and orderly information processing. These results suggest that major and minor keys, both of which are perceived as beautiful, are processed differently in the brain.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Blood, A. J., & Zatorre, R. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 11818–11823.
Blood, A. J., Zatorre, R. J., Bermudez, P., & Evans, A. C. (1999). Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions. Nature Neuroscience, 2, 382–387.
Brown, S., Martinez, J. M., & Parsons, L. M. (2004). Passive music listening spontaneously engages limbic and paralimbic systems. NeuroReport, 15, 2033–2037.
Crowder, R. G. (1984). Perception of the major/minor distinction: I. Historical and theoretical foundations. Psychomusicology, 4, 3–12.
Friston, K. J., Holmes, A. P., Worsley, K. J., Poline, J.-P., Frith, C. D., & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (1994). Statistical parametric maps in functional imaging: A general linear approach. Human Brain Mapping, 2, 189–210.
Gagnon, L., & Peretz, I. (2003). Mode and tempo relative contributions to “happy-sad” judgments in equitone melodies. Cognition & Emotion, 17, 25–40.
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Kaschak, M. P. (2003). Neuroimaging studies of language production and comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 91–114.
Hevner, K. (1935). The affective character of the major and minor modes in music. American Journal of Psychology, 47, 103–118.
Jacobsen, T., Schubotz, R. I., Höfel, L., & von Cramon, D. Y. (2006). Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty. NeuroImage, 29, 276–285.
Kawabata, H., & Zeki, S. (2004). Neural correlates of beauty. Journal of Neurophysiology, 91, 1699–1705.
Menon, V., & Levitin, D. J. (2005). The rewards of music listening: Response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic system. NeuroImage, 28, 175–184.
O’Doherty, J., Winston, J., Critchley, H., Perrett, D., Burt, D. M., & Dolan, R. J. (2003). Beauty in a smile: The role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness. Neuropsychologia, 41, 147–155.
Okamura, N., Yanai, K., Higuchi, M., Sakai, J., Iwata, R., Ido, T., et al. (2000). Functional neuroimaging of cognition impaired by a classical antihistamine, d-chlorpheniramine. British Journal of Pharmacology, 129, 115–123.
Sakai, K. L., Hashimoto, R., & Homae, F. (2001). Sentence processing in the cerebral cortex. Neuroscience Research, 39, 1–10.
Sano, K. (1995). Japanese mentality and behavior—based on the indigenous Japanese culture. Acta Neurochirurgica, 132, 192–195.
Schultz, W. (1999). The reward signal of midbrain dopamine neurons. News in Physiological Sciences, 14, 249–255.
Talairach, J., & Tournoux, P. (1988). Co-planar stereotaxic atlas of the human brain: 3-dimensional proportional system. An approach to cerebral imaging (M. Rayport, Trans.). Stuttgart: Thieme.
Vigneau, M., Jobard, G., Mazoyer, B., & Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2005). Word and non-word reading: What role for the Visual Word Form Area? NeuroImage, 27, 694–705.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This study was supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science research fellowship for young scientists (184848) to the first author and by a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology grant-in-aid for scientific research (18650063) to the seventh author.
Note—This article was accepted by the previous editorial team, when John Jonides was Editor.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Suzuki, M., Okamura, N., Kawachi, Y. et al. Discrete cortical regions associated with the musical beauty of major and minor chords. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 8, 126–131 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.2.126
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.2.126