Eyes Wide Shut: Closing-eyes Facilitates The Neural Processing Of Emotional Experience With Music

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: MRI / PET / Ultrasound
Article Date: 11 Jun 2007 - 0:00 PDT


Closing the eyes is the simplest way for changing your state of mind, possibly by directing focus of attention inward to oneself. This has been long acknowledged by humans as reflected in ancient meditation methods as well as routine concentration and emotional acts. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to discern the neural correlates of variations in emotional experience induced by closing the eyes. Negative and neutral music clips were presented to subjects while their brains were scanned. Music was used in this study because of its unique nature of being a relatively abstract emotional signal in humans. It was assumed that closing the eyes will modify the individual experience with music by increasing self-oriented processing. Results revealed two separate neural networks for processing music in relation to the mental state induced by eye position. Listening to music with eyes closed relative to eyes open recruited stronger activation in central emotion-related regions such as the amygdala and connected prefrontal cortex brainstem nuclei. Moreover, selective effect to negativity of emotion in the music clips was observed in the amygdala only with eyes closed in correspondence to increased subjective arousal experience by individuals. Findings suggest that one's focus to self or the world engages different neural mechanism for processing emotional stimuli. Specifically, variations in subjective emotional experience that relate to enhanced self-oriented processing are mediated by the amygdala and its distributed connected regions. Future studies should explore the relevance of such differential brain processing of emotion for individually-tailored therapeutic approaches.

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