ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2021
Trait Empathy Shapes Neural Responses Toward Sad Music.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Music's context-dependent influence on oxytocin, social bonding, and emotion regulation: a systematic review.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Pooled it
- APOE ε4-related structural vulnerability in mild cognitive impairment: a subsystem-based analysis of the default mode network.Research square · 2026Article
- A transdisciplinary framework for empathy research.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cultural background and instrument timbre shape emotional and EEG responses to a familiar Middle Eastern melody in Maqam Saba: a crossover clinical trial with implications for music therapy.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- EEG Microstate Associated with Trait Nostalgia.Brain topography · 2024Article
- The dual effect of background music on creativity: perspectives of music preference and cognitive interference.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Music listening evokes story-like visual imagery with both idiosyncratic and shared content.PloS one · 2023Article
- Treatments and regulatory mechanisms of acoustic stimuli on mood disorders and neurological diseases.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Review
- Mindfulness Meditation Improves Musical Aesthetic Emotion Processing in Young Adults.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Music influences vividness and content of imagined journeys in a directed visual imagery task.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Engagement in Music-Related Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic as a Mirror of Individual Differences in Musical Reward and Coping Strategies.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individuals with a predisposition to empathize engage with sad music in a compelling way, experiencing overall more pleasurable emotions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these music-related experiences in empathic individuals are unknown. The present study tested whether dispositional empathy modulates neural responses to sad compared with happy music. Twenty-four participants underwent fMRI while listening to 4-min blocks of music evoking sadness or happiness. Using voxel-wise regression, we found a positive correlation between trait empathy (with scores assessed by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and eigenvector centrality values in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), including the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). We then performed a functional connectivity (FC) analysis to detect network nodes showing stronger FC with the vmPFC/mOFC during the presentation of sad versus happy music. By doing so, we identified a "music-empathy" network (vmPFC/mOFC, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, primary visual cortex, bilateral claustrum and putamen, and cerebellum) that is spontaneously recruited while listening to sad music and includes brain regions that support the coding of compassion, mentalizing, and visual mental imagery. Importantly, our findings extend the current understanding of empathic behaviors to the musical domain and pinpoint sad music as an effective stimulus to be employed in social neuroscience research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.