The Neuroscience of Music and Emotional Processing: Evidence from Nigerian Participants Across Ethnic Musical Traditions

This research investigates the neurological basis of emotional responses to music among Nigerian participants representing Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Ijaw ethnic backgrounds, examining whether universal or culturally specific neural mechanisms underlie music-induced emotion. The neuroscience of music has generated substantial research on emotional processing in Western populations, but cross-cultural neuroimaging studies involving African participants remain almost entirely absent, creating a significant gap in the generalisability of existing neuroscientific models. This study employs functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography to measure neural activation and coherence patterns in 80 adult participants during controlled listening paradigms presenting culturally familiar indigenous music, culturally unfamiliar indigenous music, Western classical music, and affectively neutral stimuli. Subjective emotional ratings are collected using the Geneva Emotional Music Scale adapted for Nigerian contexts. The study applies mixed-effects neural data modelling and cross-cultural comparison analysis. Ethical protocols are developed in close collaboration with community advisory boards from each ethnic group. The study draws on affective neuroscience, cross-cultural music psychology, and recent critical neuroscience of music literature. Findings will test the universality of neural correlates of musical emotion against culturally specific activation patterns, making an original empirical contribution to both neuroscience and ethnomusicology. Keywords: Music neuroscience, emotional processing, cross-cultural study, Nigerian ethnic music, neuroimaging.