MUSIC ALTERS VISUAL PERCEPTION

Jolij J., Meurs M. (2011). Music Alters Visual Perception. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18861. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0018861

Top-down processing of visual output is the core theory of this observation. The key elements consist of contextual information, previous knowledge, and expectations. Once we receive the visual input, the brain renders the data using those main features to subjectively interpret what we see out there. The effect helps our lives easier as it retrieves our memory that has already been stored in the brain to support us in processing. Later in this experiment, the researchers discovered that there was another bit to be taken into the visual processing method. The current emotional state of the subjects could strongly affect the determination in what they think they see.

Sensory information in everyday life could be ambiguous and wide open for interpretation. Mood could affect the subjects’ perceptual process in either way by manipulating the focus of the subjects’ perception. Positive mood engaged with big-picture processing. Negative mood engaged with detailed processing. When the subjects were asked to summarise a story, ones holding positive mood would tell the plot, whereas ones holding negative mood would point out specifics. Without a particular mood, the subjects still possibly remained bias in perception towards things they considered negative. However, just a small dose of positive reinforcement could replace this negativity bias in short term. The subjects with negative mood quicker detected negative facial expression in morphing face scale as opposed to ones with positive mood. The subjects with positive mood tended to judge vague facial expressions more as positive. This suggestion also applied to body language interpretation.

Music as a stimulus could prove that cognitive and meta-cognitive processes were not the only influence on the subjects’ perception. Music influenced the subjects’ particular mood affected as a top-up of the top-down visual processing. The subjects were presented with emotional faces generated in noise and were asked to rate face emotion. The experiment was conducted in three conditions. The subjects performed the task without music and were induced by both happy and sad music of their choices, one by one, while they were doing the test. The Mood-congruency effect showed obvious presence. The subjects were better to detect faces that exhibited emotions that aligned with their particular mood which was influenced by the music they were listening to. The result among subjects revealed consistency.

There was also the case of false alarms. Not only music intensified the subjects’ sensitivity, but also urged their visual perception. The subjects later reported faces that exhibited emotions that aligned with their particular mood in absence of the actual visual stimuli. This implicated mood could create bias to illusory perception. The case was reported remarkably higher when the subjects were listening to happy music than sad music or no music. This event could be concluded as purely illusory percepts rather than a random prediction to ambiguous stimulus. The subjects’ perceptual decisions were strictly driven by their current state of mind.

Emotional state also strongly influences the process of perceptual input. So to speak, the top-down theory is not always predictive on its own. It should be considered as mood-dependent modulation. The reward value the subjects attached to each emotional face could represent as the action of their state of mind. There is a study about the brain working pattern as the mood congruency process is activated. Congruency switched on the superior temporal gyrus yet turned down the operation in the face-specific fusiform gyrus. The event conversely happened with incongruent musicface pairs. The study suggested a contradictory way of top-down implementation in visual processing between congruency and incongruency.

In conclusion, mood reflects visual awareness in biasing sensory input and creating illusory perception. Additionally, failure to carry out top-down visual processing may link to autism spectrum disorder as the process essentially involves activities that require social cognition such as emotional face recognition. ■

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