Involuntary Attention Enhancement by Melody: Neurophysiological Evidence

Abstract

Cognitive behaviors are supported by unconscious attention and subsequent conscious attention accompanied with motor readiness. To investigate whether melodic speech would be effective for attracting the unconscious attention, we performed delayed response tasks with melodic/monotonous warning stimuli. We found that melodic stimuli are effective for generating mismatch negativity (MMN) as an unconscious early attention marker and subsequent contingent negative variation (CNV) even under attention-distracting conditions. The findings will be neurophysiological evidence for music therapy. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.