Confession of a Paris rookie: I talk to strangers.

Dear Mom & Dad,

Not gonna lie, I have been talking to strangers despite your safety warnings about pick-pocketers and creepers. To my pleasant surprise, all my stranger-interactions have been positive. Maybe it’s due to the special neural network that relates empathy and strangers (Rameson, 2012). I gave a lost French lady directions to the metro, and couple of days later, this guy gave me directions to Notre Dame. I also ran into a group of French military students who were thrilled to see Americans. I wish I could capture all these moments as accurate as possible, but sadly, the dynamic nature of memories and their vulnerability to change makes such task extremely difficult (Yates, 2011). Regardless, Paris and I have been getting along just fine.

stranger danger at Notre Dame? 1st year French military students studying engineering.

You probably would have had a heart attack at fete de la musique aka a place full of strangers and music. It’s a giant music festival in France to celebrate the first day of summer. Paris was the perfect place to roam around the streets filled with music of all genre ranging from the blues, electronic, orchestral, chorale, and rock. Unfortunately, I did get lost from the NBB crew because I was too absorbed listening to these drummers. Music has this universal constant where everyone can derive meaning from it, unlike foreign languages (Demorest et al, 2010).

 oh, the places I went!

You are probably thinking… great. My daughter is wandering around Paris staring at strange faces and listening to ten types of music. I understand your confusion, but I assure you that the tuition money is not going to waste. I’ve been trying to integrate all my sensory information, especially in seeing and listening. There seems to be relationship in background music and memory for facial expression (Wolozyn and Ewert 2012). This study aimed to investigate how happy or sad melodies affected the later recall of facial expression.

So, what exactly happened in the study? 48 undergraduates (32 females & 16 males) were recruited for the study. There were two sessions: study phase and test phase. From the beginning, they were told that there would be a memory test during the second session. During the study phase, they viewed a series 42 simple line drawings with accompanying background music (happy or sad or no music). The drawing was a child either laughing (happy) or frowning (sad) in various backgrounds. Using plain drawings was important since it eliminated other possible recognition cues, such as physical attractiveness or distinct facial features, that could have been used during the memory recall test. The background music clips (happy or sad), were from a standardized set of emotional music only consisting of a digital piano. In addition to the key (major or minor), the type of music differed in its tempo. Happy music was in the faster range (110-140 beats per minute, BPM) while the sad music fell in the slower range (66 – 110 BPM). Each illustration and its accompanying music was presented for 7 seconds to keep the presentation duration constant with two second intervals. From this arrangement, there were six stimulus types by varying the facial expression and the music type. (happy or sad + happy or sad or no music)

Summary of study phase conditions:

• a series of 42 simple drawings (happy or sad) for 7 seconds with 2 intervals
• with accompanying music in the background (happy or sad or no music)

happy or sad? the drawing used in the study

During the test phase, the 42 drawings were presented again with only the face blanked out, and there was no accompanying music. The participants had to recall if the blank face was happy or sad. If they could not remember the facial expression, they were told to guess.

Overall, the memory for faces was accurate, but the most intriguing part of the data is in the performance of the emotionally incongruent pairs (ex. happy face with sad music), which showed the lowest performace. The subjects recalled happy face as sad when it was accompanied by sad music and sad face as happy when accompanied by happy music. From this data and other similar studies, the researchers speculate that when recalling a scene, the emotional tone is set by stimulus from other senses (Eschrich, 2008 and Wolozyn and Ewert 2012). However, it’s important to note that the primary goal of the research was to study the memory retrieval of facial expression in various melodies and not on how background music influences one’s arousal or mood, although this may explain why the subjects were better at recalling the emotionally congruent pairs.

Interestingly, movies seem to be the realistic application behind this idea since they show many faces and situations paired with different music. Soundtracks have the ability to alter how the audience perceives the characters (Hoeckner et al, 2011). This idea of the emotional integration between face and music is equally represented in non-musicians and musicians, which suggests that this integration is not affected by individual musical training (Kamiyama et al., 2013). Additionally, patients with certain brain damages have hinted at some possible regions involving the association of music and facial expression. People with excision to the anteromedial temporal lobe showed impairment in their ability to recognized scary music and fearful faces (Gosselin et al, 2011).

All these different studies strongly suggest that there is a neural relationship between faces and music. This could partially explain why I have such happy thoughts when recalling fete de la musique. I know that in my inevitable nostalgia of the NBB Paris program, I will be seeing smiling faces with up beat music. So next time you meet someone, shine a beautiful smile and blast some happy tunes.

happy faces + happy music first group of strangers I met after getting lost.

References

Demorest SM, Morrison SJ, Stambaugh LA, Beken M, Richards TL, Johnson C. (2010) An fMRI investigation of the cultural specificity of music memory.

Gosselin N, Peretz I, Hasboun D, Baulac M, Samson S. (2011) Impaired recognition of musical emotions and facial expressions following anteromedial temporal lobe excision. Cortex 47: 1116 – -1125.

Hoeckner B, Wyatt EW, Decety J, Nusbaum H. (2010) Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, creativity, and the arts 5: 146 – 153

Kamiyama KS, Abla D, Iwanaga K, Okanoya K. (2013) Interaction between musical emotion and facial expression as measured by event-related potentials. Neuropsychologia 51: 500 – 505

Meyer ML, Mastern CL, Ma Y, Wang C, Shi Z, Eisenberger NI, Han H. (2012) Empathy for the social suffering of friends and strangers recruits distinct patterns of brain activation. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience

Rameson LT, Morelli SA, Lieberman MD. (2012) The neural correlates of empathy: experience, automaticity, and prosocial behavior. Journal of cognitive neuroscience 24: 235 – 245.

Woloszyn MR, Ewert L. (2012) Memory for facial expression is influenced by the background music playing during study. Advances in cognitive psychology 8: 226 – 233.

Yates D. (2011) Learning and memory: parallel processing. Nature reviews neuroscience 12:488