Music on the brain

May 13th, 2025

Written by: Lisa Wooldridge

Like it is for so many, music is a huge part of my life. I sing in the shower, listen on my walk to work, and perform classical music almost every weekend. While you might not share my love for Bach or Debussy, you probably have your own favorite artists. In fact, love of some type of music is a nearly universal human experience: our earliest ancestors crafted musical instruments, we see rich music traditions in every culture, and even infants are fascinated with music.¹ We include music in our celebrations, our religious worship, and even as a soundtrack for our chores. In this article, we’ll explore what makes music so compelling, and what it’s doing in our brain that draws us in.

What’s so special about that sound?

Intuitively, you probably know the difference between the sound of a crunch or a crash and a musical note, but what is it about notes that make them distinct? First, sound occurs when air or objects bounce off of one another, causing movements in the air that we call waves, each of which vibrates at a particular frequency. When these waves reach us, our ears convert them into an electrical signature that our brain can then interpret.² Most things that make sound cause many vibrations of different frequencies all at once (Figure 1, left). But when air bouncing off an object creates sound waves in frequencies that are exact multiples of the slowest vibration, our brain interprets them as a note, with adistinct pitchcorresponding to the lowest frequency vibration (Figure 1, right). The “Concert A” that modern orchestras tune their instruments to, for example, is a note including vibrations at multiples of 440 times per second (it’s often called A440 for this reason).

The structured nature of a note’s vibrations distinguish them from non-musical sound, but notes are only the basic building blocks of music. We string many of them together into melodies and harmonies, space them apart to provide rhythm and meter, and relate one sound to the next by organizing notes into keys and scales. All these give music both predictable and unpredictable elements. Each allows us to build expectations of what comes next – but they also leave composers room to surprise us by doing something completely unexpected. Melodies and harmonies might repeat or diverge throughout a piece; rhythms and meters set up a steady or interrupted pulse; keys and scales provide pitch centers for a song to revolve around or move away from. Comfortingly, though, even when a piece of music relies on unpredictable musical elements, most will have some characteristic that makes it distinctive and cohesive for us to latch onto (and to get it stuck in our head!)

Our expectations of what comes next in a tune comes from the structure of the song we’re listening to, but also the musical culture that surrounds us, especially the music we grow up with. For example, perhaps you find that minor keys automatically evoke sadness. The association of minor keys and gloom is ubiquitous in western European and American musical cultures. However, since most Ashkenazi Jewish music, both uplifting and somber, uses minor keys, many Jewish Americans don’t automatically associate minor keys with any mood.³ The unique influences of our past explain why we each have our own favorite music. So, what’s our brain doing while we’re listening that draws us back towards those songs again and again?

Your brain on music

Music makes us feel so good by taking advantage of a critical system that uses good vibes to help us survive. In response to certain survival necessities, like food or sex, a small spot in the back of the brain sends a surge of the chemical dopamine to the front of the brain^4,5.  This dopamine surge is associated with the pleasure we get from these encounters, which is why scientists nickname the route it takes the reward pathway. That amazing feeling – like when you eat a piece of delicious, sugary cake, or chug water after a long workout —  can lead us to pursue those things again in the future, which in turn helps us survive. Other things that are not necessary to our survival, like certain drugs, exercise, and winning prizes, can also trigger a dopamine surge and a similar happy feeling. So, too, can music!^5,6 Listening to any kind of music can activate the dopamine surge, but it’ll be especially strong when we’re listening to music that we like.^6-9 And, importantly, dopamine surges regardless of whether the music we’re listening to is evoking positive or negative emotions.¹⁰

We don’t know for sure what it is about music that triggers dopamine surges, but the leading guess is that it has something to do with how music’s structure builds our expectations. Both uncertainty about what comes next as well as surprise at what just came contribute to how pleasing we find a piece, showing how important expectations are to our experience of our favorite songs.¹¹ Studies in animals show that dopamine builds up in the mesolimbic pathway as animals get closer and closer to a reward, suggesting that the chemical’s buildup might be involved in anticipation.¹² Dopamine also surges when we expect one thing to happen, but something else happens instead (and you can learn more about this topic here!)^12,13. And while it’s important not to conflate a surge of dopamine with a surge of pleasure, it’s possible that these latter surges explain why surprise contributes to our musical enjoyment.

Why would our brain interpret notes and musical structure differently from less well-organized sounds? Why should we get a surge of dopamine from a piano sonata but not from a jackhammer blast? Very few things in nature produce the organized waves that create musical notes, but one thing very important to our life does – vocal cords!¹ Whether we’re impress potential mates or to lecture on philosophy, most species use these types of sounds to communicate with each other. Communication aids cooperation, which helps us accomplish what we might not on our own, and makes survival easier. From an evolutionary perspective, then, we’re probably tuned in to music because of its power to remind us to communicate. Maybe that’s why we tend to create music for multiple participants, rather than a single voice or instrument. While it’s Gregorian chant for some, Gershwin for others, and Lady Gaga for still more, music has the unique power to captivate almost anyone, giving us a universal experience that can bring us closer together.

References

1. Zatorre RJ, Salimpoor VN. From perception to pleasure: music and its neural substrates. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Jun 18;110 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):10430-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1301228110. Epub 2013 Jun 10. PMID: 23754373; PMCID: PMC3690607.
2. National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. How do we Hear? [Internet] May 2015. Accessed 10 May 2025. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/how-do-we-hear
3. Yiddish Book Center. “Minor Keys Don’t Sound Sad to Me”: KlezCalifornia Founder Reflects on Yiddish Music. [Internet] 6 Jun 2024. Accessed 10 May 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDze3Dz0nNE
4. Gottfried JA, editor. Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2011. PMID: 22593911.
5. Kelley AE, Berridge KC. The neuroscience of natural rewards: relevance to addictive drugs. J Neurosci. 2002 May 1;22(9):3306-11. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.22-09-03306.2002. PMID: 11978804; PMCID: PMC6758373.
6. Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ. Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Sep 25;98(20):11818-23. doi: 10.1073/pnas.191355898. PMID: 11573015; PMCID: PMC58814.
7. Brown S, Martinez MJ, Parsons LM. Passive music listening spontaneously engages limbic and paralimbic systems. Neuroreport. 2004 Sep 15;15(13):2033-7. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200409150-00008. PMID: 15486477.
8. Menon V, Levitin DJ. The rewards of music listening: response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic system. Neuroimage. 2005 Oct 15;28(1):175-84. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.053. Epub 2005 Jul 14. PMID: 16023376.
9. Salimpoor VN, Benovoy M, Larcher K, Dagher A, Zatorre RJ. Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nat Neurosci. 2011 Feb;14(2):257-62. doi: 10.1038/nn.2726. Epub 2011 Jan 9. PMID: 21217764.
10. Peltola, H.-R., & Eerola, T. (2016). Fifty shades of blue: Classification of music-evoked sadness. Musicae Scientiae, 20(1), 84–102. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864915611206
11. Cheung VKM, Harrison PMC, Meyer L, Pearce MT, Haynes JD, Koelsch S. Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity. Curr Biol. 2019 Dec 2;29(23):4084-4092.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.067. Epub 2019 Nov 7. PMID: 31708393.
12. Gershman SJ, Assad JA, Datta SR, Linderman SW, Sabatini BL, Uchida N, Wilbrecht L. Explaining dopamine through prediction errors and beyond. Nat Neurosci. 2024 Sep;27(9):1645-1655. doi: 10.1038/s41593-024-01705-4. Epub 2024 Jul 25. PMID: 39054370.
13. Hacker C. Dopamine: more than just reward. PennNeuroknow. 2022 Jul. https://pennneuroknow.com/2022/06/14/dopamine-more-than-just-reward/

Figure 1 was created by Lisa Wooldridge using Biorender.com

Cover photo by geralt on Pixabay.com.