A single 10-minute mindfulness meditation session before and during listening to Chinese classical folk instrumental music changed how non-musically trained adults experienced the music. The meditation decreased negative emotional responses to happy and sad music and reduced positive emotional responses to calm music, while also promoting more beautiful musical experiences and enhancing body awareness, making the music seem to pass faster. No significant differences were found between the meditation and control groups on general mood or most mindfulness facets, except for non-judging of inner experience. The results suggest that even brief mindfulness practice can alter aesthetic emotional processing of music.
Permutation entropy (PE) and symbolic mutual information (SMI) analysis of fMRI data from 15 healthy participants under propofol sedation reveals that anesthesia differentially affects local and shared brain information. Global PE decreased from wakefulness to deep (unconscious) sedation and increased upon recovery, with greater reduction in subcortical than cortical networks. SMI's spatial pattern (topographic structure) reconfigures during unconsciousness, and the positive correlation between PE and SMI seen in conscious states is disrupted in deep sedation. PE changes preferentially occur in highly connected hub regions. These results suggest that altered local and shared information exchange is a mechanistic indicator of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness.