Music Psychology

It is well known that music has the power to evoke strong emotions and, perhaps not surprisingly, music is often used in psychological studies for the purposes of examining the effects of emotional moods or states on behaviour. Another use for music that is becoming more common is testing ability to recognise emotions. The latter premise was used as the basis for a new study out this month in Brain and Cognition. The background: Studies have shown that patients with Pakinson’s disease (PD) have impairments in emotion recognition, but so far this deficit had only been tested with faces and voices (emotional prosody). The results have not always been consistent…