Affect regulation, mental health disorders, and maladaptive brain responses in music listening : a correlational study

Abstract

Affect regulation may be defined as a process by which an individual maintains or modifies his or her mood or emotional state, by conscious or automatic processes. Adequate affect regulation may play an important role in mitigating or preventing mental illness, which is a widespread, inadequately treated and inadequately understood phenomenon. Music, which is known to express and induce emotions, may be used for affect regulation in a variety of ways, both self-directed and in therapeutic contexts. The effectiveness, however, of different uses of music in affect regulation is not yet understood. Both psychological testing and neuro-imaging were used to explore the relationship between individual differences in music use, risk or presence of mood disorder, and brain responses in music listening. For 123 participants, depression, anxiety and neuroticism measures were correlated with Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) scores. Psychological and MMR scores were then correlated with levels of neural responses in regions of interest (ROIs), exposing differences in participants with higher levels of depression or anxiety, and who more frequently use music in conjunction with a discharge or diversion regulation strategy. Differences were found between males and females both in music use and in neural responses to music listening. Males used the MMR strategy Discharge more when they had higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism. Measures of ROI activation in the right amygdala, right fusiform gyrus, and the bilateral prefrontal cortex correlated either positively or negatively with higher levels of depression, anxiety, or neuroticism, as well as males and females who used Discharge and Diversion as mood regulation strategies.