We investigated through electrophysiological recordings how music-induced emotions are recognized and combined with the emotional content of written sentences. Twenty-four sad, joyful, and frightening musical tracks were presented to 16 participants reading 270 short sentences conveying a sad, joyful, or frightening emotional meaning. Audiovisual stimuli could be emotionally congruent or incongruent with each other; participants were asked to pay attention and respond to filler sentences containing cities’ names, while ignoring the rest. The amplitude values of event-related potentials (ERPs) were subjected to repeated measures ANOVAs. Distinct electrophysiological markers were identified for the processing of stimuli inducing fear (N450, either linguistic or musical), for language-induced sadness (P300) and for joyful music (positive P2 and LP potentials). The music/language emotional discordance elicited a large N400 mismatch response (p = .032). Its stronger intracranial source was the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) devoted to multisensory integration of emotions. The results suggest that music can communicate emotional meaning as distinctively as language.

我们通过电生理记录研究了如何识别音乐诱发的情感并将其与书面句子的情感内容相结合。向16位参与者展示了二十四首悲伤，欢乐和令人恐惧的音乐曲目，这些朗读了270个简短的句子，传达了悲伤，欢乐或令人恐惧的情感含义。视听刺激可能在情感上彼此一致或不一致。要求参与者注意并回答包含城市名称的填充词，而忽略其余内容。事件相关电位（ERP）的振幅值经过重复测量方差分析。识别出不同的电生理标记物用于处理诱发恐惧的刺激（N450，语言或音乐），用于语言引起的悲伤（P300）和愉悦的音乐（P2和LP的正电位）。音乐/语言的情感失调引起了很大的N400不匹配反应（p  = .032）。其更强的颅内来源是致力于情感的多感觉整合的右上颞回（STG）。结果表明音乐可以像语言一样传达情感含义。