Fake/Real Emotion Brain Pathways

This was a group class project from the MRI fundamentals course at CMU. Our collaborative research explored the effects of music-induced real and fake emotions on brain activity, employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We studied the brain's response to happy and sad music, asking participants to generate both authentic and simulated emotional responses. The study revealed distinct brain activation patterns for real and fake emotions, contributing to our understanding of emotional processing and potential implications for mental health disorders. This work underscores the complexity of emotional representation in the brain and opens avenues for further investigation into the neural correlates of genuine and fabricated emotions.