Cultural effects on musical preferences: An fmri study

In this thesis research the reasons behind the participants? declarations as ?pleasant - unpleasant? about a musical piece and the traceability of their responses in the brain are searched. Musical pieces from four different genres are listened by eleven women and thirteen men ( age between 22-37) in an fMRI setting and their brain activations are observed. After the fMRI experiment interviews are made with the participants in order to determine their cultural background, musical tastes and their responses to those musical pieces used in the experiment. Finally participants? declarations about their musical preferences and responses to musical pieces are compared with their fMRI scans. Two points can be mentioned about the limitations of this study: first, there are not any study on the relation of ?musical taste? and ?brain?, second still there?s no brain region determined in relation with musical tastes. Although this relation is tried to be concentrated on, when brain regions determined from fMRI scans are compared with the ones found on the literature, only some suggestions about this relation could be expressed without any robust proof. However even there could not be found any meaningful statistical results, the hypotheses, ?cultural effects could change one? discourses? is confirmed. Firstly participants? thoughts on musical genres, their genre tastes and cultural backgrounds that constitute these tastes are searched in this study where musical pieces are determined without considiring participants? tastes. Secondly these interview results are compared with fMRI scans. It was clear that determination of cultural effects on musical tastes were not easy. Nevertheless the results showed that participants? responses to musical pieces are highly variable and interesting. As a result it can be said that studies on the determination of musical tastes would never give explicit conclusions.