07-06-2013, 03:45 AM
Everyone knows that connection between our emotions and music is very strong. Anyone who listens his favorite music knows how powerful music is and how it affects our emotions. However, music and sound can affect people in both ways- positive and negative. Our emotions control this process because they are responsible how we hear and how we process sound.
Hearing similar sounds to those we like can evoke good feelings because many certain types of sounds are associated with very strong emotions in our brains. In similar way, sounds can evoke negative feelings as well.
Some tests on combat veterans suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder were examined and this phenomenon with hearing association was present. These patients could evoke terrible memories from the battlefield just with a simple and common sounds like sounds of thunder, wind and rain. However, scientists were blind for a long time, because they couldn’t find out which mechanisms were responsible for these associations. Nowadays, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have discovered how fear can increase or maybe decrease the ability of discrimination between wide range of sounds. This discovery has provided new viewpoint in victims suffering post- traumatic stress disorder.
Benefits of emotions in human
Many scientists from Penn University thins that our emotions are very close linked to our perception. These emotions and our emotional response can really help us deal with newly occurred problems. Just to explain, our emotion for example, fear, can help us escape some potentially dangerous situations. This emotion also gives us ability to react very quickly.
However, there are also some situations where things can definitely go wrong in the way the fear response develops. These situations can occur in some pathological conditions like anxiety and also in PTSD. In these situations the emotional response to these events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli.
Earlier experiments on mice
A group of scientists have used emotional conditioning in laboratory mice to find out how hearing acuity can change following unpleasant event. This is commonly known as classic emotional learning. ( Hearing acuity is the clarity of clearness of hearing. It is a measure how good person hears and is the person able to distinguish two tones of different frequencies. This hearing acuity is commonly used to determine persons need for hearing aid ). In these experiments on mice, which rely on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, animals learn to separate potentially dangerous and safe sounds. This conditioning is called emotional discrimination learning. This type of conditioning is not that good method of examination. It has no brilliant results and it has showed a relatively poor learning. However, a group of scientists have designed a series of learning tasks with a mission to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the laboratory animals- mice, with variations in the difficulty of the task. What really was interesting for those scientists was how different levels of emotional discrimination can possibly affect hearing acuity. In other words, they wanted to find out how emotional responses affect perception and discrimination between sounds. The specificity of this study is that it created the connection between perception of the world and emotions, and this fact was unknown until now.
Further experiments
As expected, scientists have discovered that fine emotional learning tasks have shown greater learning specificity and results than experiments in which the tones were farther apart in frequency. The animals examined with various sounds that were far apart generalized the fear that they developed to the danger tone. This danger tone was over a whole range of frequencies. On the other hand the animals tested with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Due to fine conditioning task, they found out that it's a very short range of pitches that are eventually dangerous.
Results of the study
When scientists measured pitch discrimination abilities in the animals, they noticed that mice with more specific responses showed way more finer auditory acuity than the mice who were tested with a wider range of frequencies. In final results, a connection between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart was present. In first case, animals that specialized their emotional response had sharper pitch discrimination. In other words, these animals were able to discriminate two tones which could not be separated previously. Another very interesting finding of this study are effects of the emotional learning on hearing perception which were under control of the auditory cortex. From the previous researches auditory cortex has been known as part of the brain responsible for auditory plasticity. However, an interesting discovery was also registered. Auditory cortex did not play role in emotional learning.
Link between auditory cortex and amygdala remains unknown
When we know that auditory cortex is involved, and when we know that emotional learning is controlled by sub- cortical auditory areas and amygdala, one question still remains unanswered: how do the amygdala and cortex interact together? This question has no answer, but there is a hypothesis that the cortex and amygdala are modifiers of the subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex has role for the changes in discrimination of the frequencies. However, this brain part is not required for developing generalized or specialized emotional responses.
Possible solutions
If scientists find the way for solving that problem, it could promise new insight into the causes and possible treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder, and the question of why some people develop it while others subjected to the similar events do not. Nowadays, researchers are sure that there is a strong link between mechanisms that control emotional learning and the brain mechanisms responsible for posttraumatic stress disorder development. One of the main foci in the future will be defining and studying that connection.
Hearing similar sounds to those we like can evoke good feelings because many certain types of sounds are associated with very strong emotions in our brains. In similar way, sounds can evoke negative feelings as well.
Some tests on combat veterans suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder were examined and this phenomenon with hearing association was present. These patients could evoke terrible memories from the battlefield just with a simple and common sounds like sounds of thunder, wind and rain. However, scientists were blind for a long time, because they couldn’t find out which mechanisms were responsible for these associations. Nowadays, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have discovered how fear can increase or maybe decrease the ability of discrimination between wide range of sounds. This discovery has provided new viewpoint in victims suffering post- traumatic stress disorder.
Benefits of emotions in human
Many scientists from Penn University thins that our emotions are very close linked to our perception. These emotions and our emotional response can really help us deal with newly occurred problems. Just to explain, our emotion for example, fear, can help us escape some potentially dangerous situations. This emotion also gives us ability to react very quickly.
However, there are also some situations where things can definitely go wrong in the way the fear response develops. These situations can occur in some pathological conditions like anxiety and also in PTSD. In these situations the emotional response to these events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli.
Earlier experiments on mice
A group of scientists have used emotional conditioning in laboratory mice to find out how hearing acuity can change following unpleasant event. This is commonly known as classic emotional learning. ( Hearing acuity is the clarity of clearness of hearing. It is a measure how good person hears and is the person able to distinguish two tones of different frequencies. This hearing acuity is commonly used to determine persons need for hearing aid ). In these experiments on mice, which rely on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, animals learn to separate potentially dangerous and safe sounds. This conditioning is called emotional discrimination learning. This type of conditioning is not that good method of examination. It has no brilliant results and it has showed a relatively poor learning. However, a group of scientists have designed a series of learning tasks with a mission to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the laboratory animals- mice, with variations in the difficulty of the task. What really was interesting for those scientists was how different levels of emotional discrimination can possibly affect hearing acuity. In other words, they wanted to find out how emotional responses affect perception and discrimination between sounds. The specificity of this study is that it created the connection between perception of the world and emotions, and this fact was unknown until now.
Further experiments
As expected, scientists have discovered that fine emotional learning tasks have shown greater learning specificity and results than experiments in which the tones were farther apart in frequency. The animals examined with various sounds that were far apart generalized the fear that they developed to the danger tone. This danger tone was over a whole range of frequencies. On the other hand the animals tested with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Due to fine conditioning task, they found out that it's a very short range of pitches that are eventually dangerous.
Results of the study
When scientists measured pitch discrimination abilities in the animals, they noticed that mice with more specific responses showed way more finer auditory acuity than the mice who were tested with a wider range of frequencies. In final results, a connection between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart was present. In first case, animals that specialized their emotional response had sharper pitch discrimination. In other words, these animals were able to discriminate two tones which could not be separated previously. Another very interesting finding of this study are effects of the emotional learning on hearing perception which were under control of the auditory cortex. From the previous researches auditory cortex has been known as part of the brain responsible for auditory plasticity. However, an interesting discovery was also registered. Auditory cortex did not play role in emotional learning.
Link between auditory cortex and amygdala remains unknown
When we know that auditory cortex is involved, and when we know that emotional learning is controlled by sub- cortical auditory areas and amygdala, one question still remains unanswered: how do the amygdala and cortex interact together? This question has no answer, but there is a hypothesis that the cortex and amygdala are modifiers of the subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex has role for the changes in discrimination of the frequencies. However, this brain part is not required for developing generalized or specialized emotional responses.
Possible solutions
If scientists find the way for solving that problem, it could promise new insight into the causes and possible treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder, and the question of why some people develop it while others subjected to the similar events do not. Nowadays, researchers are sure that there is a strong link between mechanisms that control emotional learning and the brain mechanisms responsible for posttraumatic stress disorder development. One of the main foci in the future will be defining and studying that connection.
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