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AI Music Elicits Greater Emotional Arousal and Cognitive Load, Study Finds

Physiological measures revealing heightened arousal alongside elevated cognitive load prompt deeper neural investigation

La investigación, publicada en la revista PLOS One, analizó la respuesta fisiológica y emocional de 88 personas.
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El grupo generado por IA The Velvet Sundown, con mucho éxito en Spotify.

Overview

  • Researchers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Instituto RTVE and University of Ljubljana tested 88 participants with identical video clips scored by human compositions and AI-generated music from simple and complex prompts
  • AI tracks caused significantly larger pupillary dilation than human-composed pieces, indicating stronger emotional engagement
  • Complex AI prompts led to increased blink rates and skin conductance shifts, markers of higher cognitive burden
  • Listeners described AI-generated music as “more exciting” while rating human-composed scores as “more familiar”
  • Lead author Nikolaj Fiser highlighted that decoding emotional cues in AI audio may involve distinct neural pathways and called for further research