Towards the bio-personalization of music recommendation systems: A single-sensor EEG biomarker of subjective music preference

• Mobile neuroimaging leads to a whole new era of brain-oriented consumer applications.
• A single-sensor EEG biomarker to assess subjective music preference is introduced.
• It can facilitate the bio-personalization of modern music recommendation systems.

Recent advances in biosensors technology and mobile electroencephalographic (EEG) interfaces have opened new application fields for cognitive monitoring. A computable biomarker for the assessment of spontaneous aesthetic brain responses during music listening is introduced here. It derives from well-established measures of cross-frequency coupling (CFC) and quantifies the music-induced alterations in the dynamic relationships between brain rhythms. During a stage of exploratory analysis, and using the signals from a suitably designed experiment, we established the biomarker, which acts on brain activations recorded over the left prefrontal cortex and focuses on the functional coupling between high-β and low-γ oscillations. Based on data from an additional experimental paradigm, we validated the introduced biomarker and showed its relevance for expressing the subjective aesthetic appreciation of a piece of music. Our approach resulted in an affordable tool that can promote human–machine interaction and, by serving as a personalized music annotation strategy, can be potentially integrated into modern flexible music recommendation systems.