Visual Congruency Modulates Music Reward through Sensorimotor Integration

There is emerging evidence that a performer’s body movements may enhance the music-induced pleasure of audiences. However, the neural mechanism underlying such modulation remains largely unexplored. This study utilized psychophysiological and electroencephalographic data collected from listeners as they watched and listened to manipulated vocal (Mandarin lyrics) and violin performances of Japanese and Chinese pop music. All participants were unfamiliar with the violin or Mandarin. The auditory and visual elements of the stimuli were either congruent (original recording) or incongruent (drawn from unrelated music videos). We found that congruent visual movements, as opposed to incongruent ones, increased both subjective pleasure ratings and skin conductance responses but only during vocal performances. Then, we examined the coherence between the music signal and sensorimotor Mu-band oscillatory neural activity and found that congruent visual movements enhanced Mu entrainment exclusively to vocal music signal. Further, mediation analysis demonstrated that neural entrainment to vocal music significantly mediated the visual modulation of music-induced pleasure. In conclusion, our study provides novel evidence on how congruent visual movements can heighten music-induced pleasure through enhanced sensorimotor integration.