Browsing by Author "Torvinen, Niina"

Previous research has found connections between Frontal Alpha Asymmetry (FAA) and different personality traits, psychological disorders, and stress. FAA has also been found to differ between people scoring higher on Behavioral Inhibition scale (BIS) or Behavioral Activation scale (BAS). Yet, there are incongruous results on whether the FAA can be found from the resting or the active state brain activity. Additionally, research on musical expertise and its connections to the BIS/BAS scores and frontal alpha power is scarce, although studies report that musicians tend to score higher on openness, compared to non-musicians, and their brain activity differs from non-musicians. The aim of this thesis was to study possible interactions between FAA, BIS/BAS scores and musical expertise. The EEG data were collected from musicians (N = 20) and non-musicians (N = 21) while they were engaged in two sound discrimination tasks. Additionally, participants were asked to rate their performance, emotions, and arousal. Participants were divided into two groups according to their BAS scores, and the results of the questionnaires and frontal alpha power were compared between musicians and non-musicians, and between two BAS-groups. The results did not show significant interaction between BAS-scores and questionnaire scores or musical expertise and questionnaire scores. Additionally, no significant difference in FAA was found between participants scoring lower or higher on BAS-scale, or between musicians and non-musicians. Yet, musicians overall alpha power was higher than non-musicians, and most of the musicians scored higher on BAS scale, compared to non-musicians. Future studies on BIS/BAS sensitivity should take into account possible connection between musical experts and personality scores.