A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures
Authors: Putkinen Vesa, Zhou Xinqi, Gan Xianyang, Yang Linyu, Becker Benjamin, Sams Mikko, Nummenmaa Lauri
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Journal name in source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article number: e2308859121
Volume: 121
Issue: 5
eISSN: 1091-6490
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308859121
Web address : https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2308859121
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/381130769
Emotions, bodily sensations and movement are integral parts of musical experiences. Yet, it remains unknown i) whether emotional connotations and structural features of music elicit discrete bodily sensations and ii) whether these sensations are culturally consistent. We addressed these questions in a cross-cultural study with Western (European and North American, n = 903) and East Asian (Chinese, n = 1035). We precented participants with silhouettes of human bodies and asked them to indicate the bodily regions whose activity they felt changing while listening to Western and Asian musical pieces with varying emotional and acoustic qualities. The resulting bodily sensation maps (BSMs) varied as a function of the emotional qualities of the songs, particularly in the limb, chest, and head regions. Music-induced emotions and corresponding BSMs were replicable across Western and East Asian subjects. The BSMs clustered similarly across cultures, and cluster structures were similar for BSMs and self-reports of emotional experience. The acoustic and structural features of music were consistently associated with the emotion ratings and music-induced bodily sensations across cultures. These results highlight the importance of subjective bodily experience in music-induced emotions and demonstrate consistent associations between musical features, music-induced emotions, and bodily sensations across distant cultures.
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