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PRoMiSS: EEG Posterior Neural Correlates of Autobiographically Salient Music

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

David Rosen¹ (), Riddhima Chandra², Frederick Barrett³; ¹Johns Hopkins University

Music plays a central role in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and the autobiographical salience (AS) of music is thought to amplify emotion, meaning-making, and imagery, processes similarly enhanced under psychedelics (Kaelen et al., 2016). We examined the neural correlates of autobiographically salient music within a psychedelic-assisted therapy setting without drug administration. Thirty-two psychedelically-naïve adults (M = 34.4 ± 10.8 years; 59% female) completed hour-long, counterbalanced sessions with AS and standardized playlists with 64-channel EEG recorded. Data were band-pass filtered (0.5–60 Hz), cleaned using ICA for ocular/muscle artifacts, and downsampled to 512 Hz. Log-transformed spectral power was computed for Δ (1–4 Hz), θ (4–8 Hz), α (8–13 Hz), β₁ (13–20 Hz), β₂ (21–30 Hz), and γ (30–50 Hz). Within-subject Pearson correlations were computed between AS ratings and posterior log power (P1, Pz, P2, PO3, POz, PO4, O1, Oz, O2). Fisher Z-transformed coefficients were averaged across participants and tested against zero (one-sample t-tests; Bonferroni-corrected, p < .0083). Significant moderate positive correlations emerged for α (r = 0.32, p = 0.007), β₁ (r = 0.37, p = 0.006), β₂ (r = 0.41, p < 0.001), and γ (r = 0.36, p = 0.001), indicating that higher AS corresponded with increased posterior oscillatory activity. Alpha and beta increases reflect enhanced sensory integration, attention, and imagery, while elevated gamma suggests stronger binding of sensory and emotional memory representations (Imperatori et al., 2014; Knyazev et al., 2015). These findings demonstrate that personally salient music in a PAT context evokes distinct posterior alpha–gamma oscillatory dynamics linked to autobiographical memory.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition