Effect of emotional changes induced by sounds on human frontal alpha-wave during verbal and non-verbal tasks

Our performance is often affected by temporal emotional changes. To improve the task-efficiency, we investigated the brain activity for the interaction between emotion induced by sounds and cognitive function, using the Stroop task with EEG measurements. The music leading pleasure increased the upper alpha-wave power of the frontal and parietal brain regions, relative to hearing the unpleasant white noise. The alpha activity decreased during the cognitive tasks. Interestingly, the frontal alpha suppression was reduced in the non-verbal task with the pleasant music and the verbal task with the unpleasant noise, like the task performance, which would indicate the interference between emotion and cognition.