Overview

This course explores the mystery of music and emotion. Learn how melodies and rhythms can wordlessly “speak,” and why we are willing to listen. See how musical taste forms and learn why it is so personal. We first examine music-induced emotions in the tight bond between auditory and motor systems: the link that makes song and dance such perfect partners. Then we include the reward system to build a triangle of neural connectivity, giving each music lover their own unique “listener profile” of musical enjoyment. Upon completion of this course, you will understand how music gives rise to emotions and be able to list the three stages of emotion generation and how it works when listening to music. You will also be able to describe your personal listener profile and discuss how singing or listening to a song we like causes chemical reactions in our brain that release dopamine, encouraging us to keep listening. The course reveals why we like certain songs by analyzing perception across musicians and non-musicians, cultural influences, metrical structures, and tonality. All of these factors show that every emotional response is unique, as it also depends on internal and external conditions, such as when (and with whom!) we are listening.

Syllabus

Lesson 1: Welcome to The Neuroscience of Music and Emotion

Welcome to The Neuroscience of Music and Emotion! This module includes what you need to know to get the most out of your Berklee massive online course. We start with the neuroanatomy of our brains to help you get familiar with the regions and structures that give rise to musical thoughts, performance gestures, and feelings. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify where pitch and timing cues are processed, describe the difference between the dorsal and ventral auditory pathways, and list the major nuclei of the dopaminergic reward system.

Lesson 2: The Setup - Predicting and Anticipating Musical Pleasure

In lesson 2 we explore how musical taste forms through passive exposure to music in the environment. We start with rhythm perception: extracting a pulse from accented beats to predict upcoming musical events. Next, we look at tonality perception and how musical training strongly influences the sense of consonance and dissonance. Then we describe how some vocal melodies have a universal, culture-general function, like dancing, healing, and soothing infants. Finally, we see where our own preference for novel vs. familiar music relates to an appetite for aesthetic risk-taking. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify how musical tastes develop and what guides an individual to be open to (or not) new musical styles.

Lesson 3: The Payoff - Emotional Responses to Music

In lesson 3 we discuss emotional responses to music. We start by defining what an emotion is and discuss why it depends on context. Then we define emotional arousal and valence in terms of musical features. For a better understanding of the range of emotional responses, we look at musical anhedonia (absence of pleasure from music) and its opposite: music-evoked chills. Next, we describe the three stages of emotion generation caused by music and the processes involved. Finally, we look at why most listeners get a good feeling from sad songs. By the end of this lesson, you will have a better understanding of what composers and songwriters can expect if they want their music to generate an emotional response in a listener.

Lesson 4: The Listener Profile - The Music of You

In our final lesson we describe the listener profile: the uniqueness of each person’s response to music. We start with differentiating between liking and wanting to learn how a simple hedonic response (“I like that”) differs from a strongly motivated desire to acquire something (“I must hear that again!”). We see how rapidly listeners make judgments of liking vs. disliking some musical styles. Next, we look at bonding to music in adolescence to learn why adults tend to have a “reminiscence bump” for the music of their teenage years. This leads to how our favorite music activates the “default network,” encouraging our brain to mind-wander or daydream during enjoyment. Finally, we illustrate the listening brain in its search for the rewards found in the musical elements of melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre, or the aesthetic elements of novelty, authenticity, and realism. We summarize how a listener’s internal conditions and external context ultimately work together to determine music-evoked emotional responding.