As the basis of musical emotions, dynamic tension experience is felt by listeners as music unfolds over time. The effects of musical harmonic and melodic structures on tension have been widely investigated, however, the potential roles of metrical structures in tension perception remain largely unexplored. This experiment examined how different metrical structures affect tension experience and explored the underlying neural activities. The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded and subjective tension was rated simultaneously while participants listened to music meter sequences. On large time scale of whole meter sequences, it was found that different overall tension and low-frequency (1 ~ 4 Hz) steady-state evoked potentials were elicited by metrical structures with different periods of strong beats, and the higher overall tension was associated with metrical structure with the shorter intervals between strong beats. On small time scale of measures, dynamic tension fluctuations within measures was found to be associated with the periodic modulations of high-frequency (10 ~ 25 Hz) neural activities. The comparisons between the same beats within measures and across different meters both on small and large time scales verified the contextual effects of meter on tension induced by beats. Our findings suggest that the overall tension is determined by temporal intervals between strong beats, and the dynamic tension experience may arise from cognitive processing of hierarchical temporal expectation and attention, which are discussed under the theoretical frameworks of metrical hierarchy, musical expectation and dynamic attention.

作为音乐情感的基础，随着音乐随着时间的推移，听众会感受到动态的张力体验。音乐和声和旋律结构对张力的影响已被广泛研究，然而，格律结构在张力感知中的潜在作用仍然很大程度上未被探索。该实验研究了不同的韵律结构如何影响紧张体验，并探索了潜在的神经活动。当参与者听音乐节拍序列时，记录脑电图（EEG）并同时评估主观张力。在整个韵律序列的大时间尺度上，发现不同强节拍周期的韵律结构会引发不同的整体张力和低频（1~4 Hz）稳态诱发电位，并且较高的整体张力与具有韵律结构，强节拍之间的间隔较短。在小时间尺度的测量中，发现测量内的动态张力波动与高频（10 ~ 25 Hz）神经活动的周期性调制有关。小节和大时间尺度上小节内相同节拍和不同节拍之间的比较验证了节拍对节拍引起的张力的语境影响。我们的研究结果表明，整体张力是由强节拍之间的时间间隔决定的，动态张力体验可能源于分层时间期望和注意的认知处理，这在格律层次、音乐期望和动态注意的理论框架下进行了讨论。