Decoding Selective Auditory Attention to Musical Elements in Ecologically Valid Music Listening

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Akama, Taketo, Zhang, Zhuohao, Nagashima, Tsukasa, Yutaka, Takagi, Minamikawa, Shun, Polouliakh, Natalia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866908694897229824
author Akama, Taketo
Zhang, Zhuohao
Nagashima, Tsukasa
Yutaka, Takagi
Minamikawa, Shun
Polouliakh, Natalia
author_facet Akama, Taketo
Zhang, Zhuohao
Nagashima, Tsukasa
Yutaka, Takagi
Minamikawa, Shun
Polouliakh, Natalia
contents Art has long played a profound role in shaping human emotion, cognition, and behavior. While visual arts such as painting and architecture have been studied through eye tracking, revealing distinct gaze patterns between experts and novices, analogous methods for auditory art forms remain underdeveloped. Music, despite being a pervasive component of modern life and culture, still lacks objective tools to quantify listeners' attention and perceptual focus during natural listening experiences. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to decode selective attention to musical elements using naturalistic, studio-produced songs and a lightweight consumer-grade EEG device with only four electrodes. By analyzing neural responses during real world like music listening, we test whether decoding is feasible under conditions that minimize participant burden and preserve the authenticity of the musical experience. Our contributions are fourfold: (i) decoding music attention in real studio-produced songs, (ii) demonstrating feasibility with a four-channel consumer EEG, (iii) providing insights for music attention decoding, and (iv) demonstrating improved model ability over prior work. Our findings suggest that musical attention can be decoded not only for novel songs but also across new subjects, showing performance improvements compared to existing approaches under our tested conditions. These findings show that consumer-grade devices can reliably capture signals, and that neural decoding in music could be feasible in real-world settings. This paves the way for applications in education, personalized music technologies, and therapeutic interventions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_05528
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Decoding Selective Auditory Attention to Musical Elements in Ecologically Valid Music Listening
Akama, Taketo
Zhang, Zhuohao
Nagashima, Tsukasa
Yutaka, Takagi
Minamikawa, Shun
Polouliakh, Natalia
Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
Signal Processing
Art has long played a profound role in shaping human emotion, cognition, and behavior. While visual arts such as painting and architecture have been studied through eye tracking, revealing distinct gaze patterns between experts and novices, analogous methods for auditory art forms remain underdeveloped. Music, despite being a pervasive component of modern life and culture, still lacks objective tools to quantify listeners' attention and perceptual focus during natural listening experiences. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to decode selective attention to musical elements using naturalistic, studio-produced songs and a lightweight consumer-grade EEG device with only four electrodes. By analyzing neural responses during real world like music listening, we test whether decoding is feasible under conditions that minimize participant burden and preserve the authenticity of the musical experience. Our contributions are fourfold: (i) decoding music attention in real studio-produced songs, (ii) demonstrating feasibility with a four-channel consumer EEG, (iii) providing insights for music attention decoding, and (iv) demonstrating improved model ability over prior work. Our findings suggest that musical attention can be decoded not only for novel songs but also across new subjects, showing performance improvements compared to existing approaches under our tested conditions. These findings show that consumer-grade devices can reliably capture signals, and that neural decoding in music could be feasible in real-world settings. This paves the way for applications in education, personalized music technologies, and therapeutic interventions.
title Decoding Selective Auditory Attention to Musical Elements in Ecologically Valid Music Listening
topic Neurons and Cognition
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05528