Effects Of Mindfulness Meditation On Musical Aesthetic Emotion Processing

Appreciating music is one of the favorable ways of artistic experience for human beings.There is a profound impact of musical aesthetic processing on human life.It is the core feature of people enjoying music that experiences of aesthetic emotions induced by Music listening.The multi-component model of aesthetic emotion is an important theoretical basis for exploring and explaining psychological and neural mechanism of musical aesthetic emotion processing.The previous studies have shown that music can regulate emotions,induce positive and pleasant experiences,promote physical and mental health,and enhance well-being in a safe aesthetic context.However,most of the previous studies based on musicology(music ontology)explored the behavior and neural mechanisms of music-induced emotion and aesthetic experiences,yet paid less attention to the mechanism of individual attention adjustment and physical and mental states that affect the musical aesthetic emotional processing.Mindfulness meditation is a form of self-regulatory exercise for mind and body,which is based on the core concepts of paying attention to the present moment and attaining a state of consciousness in a non-judgmental/accepting manner.As an economic,effective and safe training method,mindfulness meditation has brought many positive effects to people,such as regulated negative emotions,enhanced self-awareness,psychological function,improved health,cognitive recovery,and reduced stress symptoms.In recent years,some researchers have also explored the correlation between mindfulness meditation and specific music activities.The results showed that mindfulness-based music listening improved individual emotional processing and provided theoretical basis and empirical evidence for revealing the internal mechanism of music emotional processing.Therefore,we make the conjecture that mindfulness meditation may be an effective means to promote musical aesthetic emotion processing,and has a positive impact on individual aesthetic experience and emotional regulation.Mindfulness meditation training may be an effective avenue to enhance aesthetic concentration,aesthetic experience and cultivate aesthetic perception and sensitivity.In addition,based on Chinese folk instrumental works which lacks psychological evidence to explore the behavioral and neural mechanism of mindfulness meditation affecting musical aesthetic emotion processing.Chinese folk music is deeply influenced by Chinese traditional culture and emotional expression with an unique lingering charm.There may be differences in psychological and neural mechanism of music aesthetics.Therefore,using experimental psychology to systematically explore the aesthetic psychology and neural mechanisms of traditional Chinese music can provide new theoretical foundations and experimental evidences for the application of Chinese folk music in the fields of musical aesthetic education,music therapy,and physical and mental health.This research aimed to fill this gap by testing these questions.First,does mindfulness meditation affect musical aesthetic emotional processing? Second,(1)do mindfulness traits and music training impact on musical aesthetic emotional processing,and(2)could mindfulness meditation improve musical aesthetic emotional processing of individuals with mindfulness traits and music training? Third,could mindful music listening effectively regulate negative emotions related to COVID-19?In order to answer the first question,Study 1 included two experiments(experiments1 and 2).Experiment 1 used new music aesthetic tasks and music flow experience post-test tasks,which confirmed that mindfulness meditation significantly affected the musical aesthetic emotion processing among non-musically trained adults.The results show that mindfulness meditation enhanced the aesthetic experience of non-musically trained adults;reduced the recognition and experience of aesthetic emotions;reduced the negative emotional experiences of happy and sad music,and the positive emotional experience of calm music.It also has a certain promoting effect on emotional relaxation and music liking,and enhanced physical consciousness and induced a faster perception of music passing time.Experiment 2 used the experimental tasks,materials and procedure of Experiment 1 to confirm that mindfulness meditation also significantly affected the musical aesthetic emotion processing of young adults with music training.The results show that mindfulness meditation promoted the emotional experience of sad music and happy music,and enhances the experience of musical beauty and liking in three emotion levels;although the emotional recognition of music is not regulated by mindfulness meditation,it significantly enhanced the aesthetic emotional experiences and upgraded the emotional activation of happy and sad music;improved the beauty and liking of all music.It also enhanced the concentration of music listening and has a positive impact on the mood of individual with no musical training.The results of study 1 showed that mindfulness meditation has significant effect on musical aesthetic emotions processing.It is manifested in that mindfulness meditation significantly regulates the aesthetic emotional experience of young adults with or without music training,enhances their experience of musical beauty,and improves their liking for Chinese folk music to a certain extent.Based on the research results of Study 1,we found that in addition to the individual's attention and physical and mental state,some individual characteristics(e.g.,mindfulness traits)and musical experiences(e.g.,music training)may also be important factors affecting musical aesthetic emotion the processing.Study 2 included four experiments(e.g.,Experiment 3-6)that mainly serves to test whether the mindfulness traits and music training affect musical aesthetic emotion processing,and whether mindfulness meditation improve musical aesthetic emotion processing among young adults with high and low mindfulness traits and young adults with or without musical training.Study 2 is divided into two parts:the first part included two experiments.Experiment 3 used the musical aesthetic task to explore the role of mindfulness meditation on musical aesthetic emotion processing among young adults with high and low mindfulness traits.The results showed that there have been significant differences between young adults with high and low mindfulness traits in musical aesthetic emotion processing,which is manifested in that the mindfulness trait improved the attention control ability and emotional arousal sensitivity in musical aesthetic emotional processing,and enhanced the positive emotional experience of all music,promoted the improvement of the beauty and preference of happy music,and reduced the negative emotional experience of calm and sad music.Using a revised emotional face recognition and emotional experience task and questionnaire-behavioral-Event Related Potentials(ERP)technology,Experiment 4 revealed the behavioral and neurophysiological mechanisms of mindfulness meditation improving musical aesthetic emotion processing.Behavioral results showed that mindfulness meditation significantly enhanced the executive control ability of individuals with high and low mindfulness traits on emotional facial processing and effectively regulated the aesthetic emotional processing of repeated listening to familiar music.The ERP results show that in the context of repeated listening to familiar music,completing emotion recognition tasks activated smaller P3 amplitudes in the context of repeated listening to familiar music;and activated larger LPC amplitudes in the frontal region,indicating individuals need to consume more advanced cognitive resources during the induction of aesthetic emotion and focusing in the present moment.The second part also contains two experiments.Experiment 5 also used musical aesthetic task to test the effect of music training on the processing of music aesthetic emotions.The results show that music training played a significant role in the processing of musical aesthetic emotions,this may stem from the mindfulness trait(Acting with Awareness)possessed by musically trained young adults,Acting with Awareness is significantly positively correlated to the mindfulness state of "focusing on the present".During music listening,compared with non-musically trained young adults,although there is no significantly difference between emotion recognition and experience,mindfulness meditation enhanced the emotional arousal,improved the beauty and liking of music,and has a positive impact on the mood among musically trained young adults.Using the experimental materials,tasks,procedures of Experiment 4,experiment 6 explored the behavioral and neurophysiological mechanism of mindfulness meditation on musical aesthetic emotion processing among young adults with or without musical training.The results showed that mindfulness meditation significantly improved the musical aesthetic emotional processing of young adults with or without music training.Behavioral results show that mindfulness meditation promoted the executive control of emotional facial processing and maintains the intensity of emotional experience of repeated listening to familiar music.The ERP results are consistent with the results of Experiment 4.Under the situation of repeated listening to familiar music,completing the emotional face recognition task induced a smaller P3 wave amplitude in the frontal region,and listening to familiar music again also induced larger LPC amplitudes in the frontal region.The results of study2 showed that P3 is related to the consistent cognitive evaluation of emotional facial stimuli,and LPC is an effective ERP indicator for detecting attention retention and emotional arousal in emotional processing.P3 and LPC are important EEG components in face recognition and emotional experience processing,providing new evidence for a deeper understanding of the internal mechanism of mindfulness meditation to improve musical aesthetic emotion processing.According to the results of Research 1 and Research 2,from the application perspective of Chinese folk music,study 3 explored the behavioral and mechanism of mindfulness music listening to negative emotion regulation.Using the revised face-word Stroop task,Experiment 7 revealed behavioral and neurophysiological mechanism of Mindfulnessbased music listening on negative emotion regulation related to COVID-19 among healthy young adults.The results show that calm and happy music effectively regulated negative emotions;in a negative mood,young people experience more negative emotions and less positive emotions when listening to sad music;in the conflict control performance of the emotional Stroop task,compared with the baseline(pre-test)and the mindfulness music intervention(post-test)phases,the negative emotion induction phase(mid-test)showed lower accuracy and slower response time.The ERP results are consistent with the behavioral results.In the negative mood,the young adults completed the facial stimulation tasks with inconsistent conditions of emotional Stroop task,which consumed more advanced cognitive resources.By taking all features of ERP components(N2,N3,P3,and LPC)into consideration in conflict control,we can comprehensively understand why mindfulness?based listening to music with positive emotional valences can effectively regulate young adults' induced negative emotions related to COVID-19.Our results showed that the specific processing of emotional faces in conflict control is tightly related to the following ERP components: greater N2 is closely related to attentional bias in cognitive conflict,and N3 is closely related to violations in semantic integration of conflict control,which reflects pre-semantic perceptual processes to emotional visual stimuli during the early processing of attention;P3 is related to congruent cognitive evaluation of the meaning of stimuli,and expression suppression in conflict control elicited a smaller P3 amplitude under a negative condition;and LPC is an effective ERPs index for detection of emotional arousal in emotion regulation.Consistent with previous studies,this result indicates apparent N2,N3,P3,and LPC components in the attention processing of conflict control,and may provide a new direction for exploring attention training and emotion regulation strategies.In view of the behavior and EEG results of the above three studies,we can conclude as follows:First,mindfulness meditation effectively regulates the aesthetic emotion experiences,enhances the experience of musical beauty,and improves the liking of Chinese folk music to a certainly extension of individuals with and without music training.Second,mindfulness traits and music training significantly enhance the arousal of aesthetic emotion,enhance the beauty and liking of music,and have a positive impact on the mood.It is worth noting that mindfulness meditation improves the executive control on recognition of emotional face pictures individuals with high and low mindfulness traits and individuals with or without music training,and effectively regulates their musical aesthetic emotional processing.The ERP results show that P3 is an effective EEG indicator reflecting recognition of emotional face pictures,and the smaller P3 amplitude indicates that mindfulness meditation promotes the reaction of emotional face pictures;LPC is an effective EEG indicator reflecting attention maintenance and emotional experience,and larger LPC amplitudes indicate that more advanced cognitive resources are consumed in the state of emotional induction and attention maintenance.Third,mindfulness listening of calm and happy music significantly regulates negative emotions related to COVID-19.The ERP results show that in the performance of the Stroop task,compared with the neutral emotional state,the negative emotional state induces larger N2,N3 and LPC amplitudes and smaller P3 amplitudes,and calm and happy music effectively adjusted negative emotions related to COVID-19.It is worth noting that although the behavioral results of sad music show no significant difference in Stroop performance compared to calm and happy music,the larger LPC amplitude induced by sad music indicates that completing the Stroop task requires more high-level cognitive resources.To summarize,mindfulness meditation is an effective means to promote musical aesthetic emotional processing,and it has a positive impact on the individual's aesthetic experience and emotional regulation.Mindfulness meditation provides a new way to enhance the concentration of Chinese college students' music aesthetics,enhance their aesthetic experience,and cultivate their perceptual qualities.Based on the results of this research,we propose a new theoretical model(psychological structural model of music aesthetic emotions),which provides an important theoretical basis for future research based on mindfulness music listening exploring effective way to improve aesthetic experience and cultivate perceptual quality of individuals.