Prejudices when listening to music, do you have them?

Researchers from the University of Arkansas, Arizona State University and the University of Connecticut studied this phenomenon and recently published their results in Scientific Reports. They found that simply being told that an artist is a professional or a student changes the way the brain responds to music. They also noted that overcoming this bias took a conscious effort.

The study involved 20 participants without formal training in music. In a functional magnetic imaging, or fMRI machine, at the newly established Brain Imaging Research Center at the University of Connecticut, participants listened to eight pairs of 70-second musical fragments, presented in a random order. Each pair consisted of two different versions of the same fragment. The participants were told that one of the pairs was played by a “conservatory piano student” and the other was a “world-renowned professional pianist.” Although the participants actually listened to a student and professional performance, they heard each pair twice during the reverse label experiment, so that the researchers could investigate the effect of the label independently of the qualities of the performance itself.

Participants rated their enjoyment of each excerpt on a scale of 1 to 10 and indicated which of the two excerpts in each pair they chose. The researchers used the fMRI scans to investigate brain areas associated with auditory processing, pleasure and reward, and cognitive control. To study brain activity associated with bias, the researchers compared brain images of the participants who preferred the “professional” fragments with images of participants who preferred the “student” fragments. They found that when a participant preferred the play attributed to a professional player, there was significantly more activity in the primary auditory cortex, as well as part of the brain associated with pleasure and reward.

This activity began when the participant was informed that the player was a professional, before the music even started, and remained consistent throughout the excerpt, suggesting that the belief that a musician is a professional led these contestants more attention to the music. to spend and their listening experience not biased at the beginning, but throughout the excerpt. The scientists also examined the brain activity of participants who picked up the “student” over the “professional” recordings. While these participants listened to the recordings attributed to the professional, researchers saw higher activity in a brain region related to cognitive control and deliberative thinking over the course of the fragment. They also found that these participants had greater connectivity between the parts of their brain related to cognitive control and reward.