An fMRI Study on the Differences in the Brain Regions Activated by an Identical Audio-Visual Clip Using Major and Minor Key Arrangements

동일한 영상자극을 이용한 장조음악과 단조음악에 의해 유발된 뇌 활성화의 차이 : fMRI 연구

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in the brain activation evoked by music arranged in major and minor key used with an identical motion film during the fMRI testing. A part of the audio-visual combinations composed by Iwamiya and Sano were used for the study stimuli. This audio- visual clip was originally developed by combining a small motion segment of the animation "The Snowman" and music arranged in both major and minor key from the original jazz music "Avalon" rewritten in a classical style. Twenty-seven Japanese male graduate and undergraduate students participated in the study. Brain regions more activated by the major key than the minor key when presented with the identical motion film were the left cerebellum, the right fusiform gyrus, the right superior occipital, the left superior orbito frontal, the right pallidum, the left precuneus, and the bilateral thalamus. On the other hand, brain regions more activated by the minor key than the major key when presented with the identical motion film were the right medial frontal, the left inferior orbito frontal, the bilateral superior parietal, the left postcentral, and the right precuneus. The study showed a difference in brain regions activated between the two different stimulus (i.e., major key and minor key) controlling for the visual aspect of the experiment. These findings imply that our brain systematically generates differently in the way it processes music written in major and minor key(Supported by the User Science Institute of Kyushu University, Japan and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation).