The Neuroscience of Emotion Elicitation by Music

At the intersection of music and neuroscience, the auditory system plays a critical role in human responses. Initial reception of music stimuli is followed by auditory processing, allowing people to perceive, interpret, analyze, and understand these sounds. This article will review the main stages in this sensory reception and processing of music in the nervous system and how they result in emotional responses. To aid in understanding the processing of music, the article briefly addresses the origins of music and its role in human history. Of particular interest are the aesthetic emotions – the feelings that arise as one evaluates the beauty, novelty, expressiveness, etc. of the music as one listens. We also consider whether the processing of these emotions in the brain leads to the experience of pleasure and reward in a fashion similar to that of basic survival-related behaviors such as eating and drinking. Finally, we consider brain disorders affecting the perception, evaluation, and emotional response to music.