Subliminal audio-visual temporal congruency in music videos enhances perceptual pleasure

Chenyang Lin; Maggie Yeh; Ladan Shams

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2022.136623

Subliminal audio-visual temporal congruency in music videos enhances perceptual pleasure

Neurosci Lett. 2022 May 14:779:136623. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2022.136623. Epub 2022 Apr 8.

Authors

Chenyang Lin¹, Maggie Yeh², Ladan Shams³

Affiliations

¹ Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
³ Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Electronic address: lshams@psych.ucla.edu.

PMID: 35398533
DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2022.136623

Abstract

Human perception is inherently multisensory, with cross-modal integration playing a critical role in generating a coherent perceptual experience. To understand the causes of pleasurable experiences, we must understand whether and how the relationship between separate sensory modalities influences our experience of pleasure. We investigated the effect of congruency between vision and audition in the form of temporal alignment between the cuts in a video and the beats in an accompanying soundtrack. Despite the subliminal nature of this manipulation, a higher perceptual pleasure was found for temporal congruency compared with incongruency. These results suggest that the temporal aspect of the interaction between the visual and auditory modalities plays a critical role in shaping our perceptual pleasure, even when such interaction is not accessible to conscious awareness.

Keywords: Audiovisual integration; Multisensory; Perception; Pleasure; Subliminal; Temporal congruency.

MeSH terms

Acoustic Stimulation
Auditory Perception
Humans
Music*
Photic Stimulation
Pleasure
Visual Perception