Does artistic training sharpen emotional perception of music? EEG evidence from Chinese college students

Aesthetic experience plays a central role in the emotional function of music, yet limited research has examined how long-term painting training shapes neural responses to music-induced emotion. Grounded in the frameworks of neuroaesthetics and aesthetic empathy, this study used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how painting training influences the neural processing of musical emotion among Chinese university students. Participants with formal painting training, those without formal artistic training, and no training experience students were exposed to musical excerpts. EEG results revealed significant group differences primarily in the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, including alpha-band activity in the frontal region, theta-, alpha-, and gamma-band activity in the temporal region, and delta-, theta-, alpha-, and gamma-band activity in the parietal region. No significant differences were observed in the beta band. These findings suggest that long-term painting training is associated with distinct neural patterns during the perception of musical emotion and provide neuroaesthetic evidence that painting training may facilitate cross-modal aesthetic processing and the development of aesthetic empathy.