Analysis of music appreciation by Kansei evaluation and brain activity

Music has an effect altering the feeling of the listener. Currently, several researches challenged to manifest the effect of music on the listeners. Previous study revealed that frontal lobe plays an important role for music appreciation. Based on this finding, this study attempted to classify genre (category) of music pieces and knowingness/unknowingness of them based on Kansei evaluation and brain activity of frontal lobe obtained from NIRS. Furthermore, we attempted to explain impression of music from brain activity. As a result, discrimination rate about knowingness of music achieved 87%. In genre discrimination, the discrimination rate became high if data for discrimination were restricted to known music. We can conclude that it is possible to infer subject's knowingness about music and genre of music from cerebral blood data.