Jeong-Won Jeong1, Vaibhav Diwadkar2,
Carla D. Chugani3, Harry T. Chugani4, Diane C. Chugani5
1Pediatrics, Neurology,
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States; 2Psychiatry,
Behavioral Neuroscience, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States; 3Florida
Gulf Coast University; 4Pediatrics, Neurology, Radiology, Wayne
State University, Detroit, MI, United States; 5Pediatrics,
Radiology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States
Emotional cues from the environment are obtained through multiple sensory modalities, and the integration of these emotionally laden sensory signals might enhance or diminish the emotional experience conveyed by each sense alone. This study hypothesizes that neural mechanisms involved in listening to music may differ when presented together with visual stimuli that conveyed the same emotion as the music when compared to visual stimuli with incongruent emotional content. Based on above hypothesis, we present a novel functinal MRI paradigm combining happy and sad music with happy and sad faces to examine the response of superior temporal gyrus (STG) and fusiform gyrus (FG).