Music information retrieval (MIR) methods offer interesting possibilities for automatically\nidentifying time points in music recordings that relate to specific brain responses. However, how\nthe acoustical features and the novelty of the music structure affect the brain response is not yet\nclear. In the present study, we tested a new method for automatically identifying time points of brain\nresponses based on MIR analysis. We utilized an existing database including brain recordings of\n48 healthy listeners measured with electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography\n(MEG). While we succeeded in capturing brain responses related to acoustical changes in the modern\ntango piece Adios Nonino, we obtained less reliable brain responses with a metal rock piece and a\nmodern symphony orchestra musical composition. However, brain responses might also relate to the\nnovelty of the music structure. Hence, we added a manual musicological analysis of novelty in the\nmusical structure to the computational acoustic analysis, obtaining strong brain responses even to\nthe rock and modern pieces. Although no standardized method yet exists, these preliminary results\nsuggest that analysis of novelty in music is an important aid to MIR analysis for investigating brain\nresponses to realistic music.
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