| Music and imagery have been used for working emotions such as awareness, arousal, enhancement, reflection and transformation of emotions in therapeutic relationship; these are crucial processes in music psychotherapy. To illuminate the empirical adequacy of concepts of theory in guided imagery and music (GIM) as one of music psychotherapeutic methods, the present study investigated the neural bases of arousal and emotional processing in response to recall and re-experience of personal negative emotional episodes via GIM and the efficacy of GIM for arousal and emotional processing via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.;For this study, classical music and verbal stimuli were presented to 24 right-handed healthy participants, to measure the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal changes during arousal and emotional processing through GIM. Volume analyses for the contrast of GIM to guided imagery (GI) or music and region of interest (ROI) analysis for the difference of three conditions -- GIM, music, and GI -- were conducted in the regions of bilateral amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate gyrus. Results included that in the contrast of GIM to music, 11 neural regions (left anterior cingulate gyrus, left amygdala, left thalamus, left claustrum, left insula, bilateral precentral gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, right cuneus, and bilateral culmen) were activated, whereas there was no activated neural regions in the contrast of music to GIM. In the contrast of GIM to GI, 9 neural regions (right posterior cingulate gyrus, bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral precentral gyrus, left superior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, bilateral middle occipital gyrus, bilateral cuneus, right lingual gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule) were activated, whereas 3 neural regions (right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior parietal lobule) were activated in the contrast of GI to GIM. The ROI analysis revealed statistically significant differences among three conditions in bilateral amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate gyrus.;Findings suggest that guided imagery and music as multimodal stimuli are effective approach in emotional work with personal episodic memories, indicating activation of various neural regions functioning in emotions, various kinds of sensory modalities, integration of cross-modal sensory, episodic memory, empathy, and out-of-body experience. |
