Exploring the Practicality of Portable EEG Equipment for Visualising Emotional Responses When Listening to Meaningful Songs

A Position Paper

Abstract

Portable EEG technologies have gained popularity in investigating the effect of music on people’s emotional responses by affective neuroscience, music psychology, and music therapy researchers. This paper provides a brief overview of current literature on music, emotion, and EEG, and a reflection on Kim’s use of one portable EEG technology (Emotiv Insight) to explore distressed young people’s emotional responses during intentional listening of their meaningful songs. Inconsistent results in Kim’s study and across music and emotion research studies revealed the reality of the still-emerging state of EEG technologies and thus, researchers should approach the tool with vigilance and some suspicion. In our experiment, the Emotiv Insight offered distressed young people novel and interesting opportunities to reflect on their emotional distress with a new lens. However, distressed young people did not perceive that the EEG visual data actually represented the complexity of their emotional worlds. Rather, they suggested that listening to their meaningful songs, selecting emotion-related words from self-report scales, and discussing their emotions with someone was more useful to better understand their emotional worlds.

Acknowledgements

Kyung Min Mindy Kim was supported in conducting this research by Melbourne Research PhD Scholarship. The Emotiv technology was purchased with support from a strategic Faculty of Fine Arts and Music internal grant.