What makes music enjoyable

The current favourite theory among scientists who study the cognition of music — how we process it mentally — dates back to , when the philosopher and composer Leonard Meyer suggested that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it. This, Meyer argued, is what music does too. The constant dance between expectation and outcome thus enlivens the brain with a pleasurable play of emotions.

Why should we care, though, whether our musical expectations are right or not? Making predictions about our environment — interpreting what we see and hear, say, on the basis of only partial information — could once have been essential to our survival, and indeed still often is, for example when crossing the road. And involving the emotions in these anticipations could have been a smart idea.

On the African savannah, our ancestors did not have the luxury of mulling over whether that screech was made by a harmless monkey or a predatory lion. The idea that musical emotion arises from little violations and manipulations of our expectations seems the most promising candidate theory, but it is very hard to test. We expect rising melodies to continue to rise — but perhaps not indefinitely, as they never do.

Have you ever thought about certain songs that keep on repeating in your mind over time affecting you deeply? Scientists say that listening to music releases dopamine in the brain, a chemical or a feel-good neurotransmitter that helps in motivating a person.

The general feeling is that we like music as it makes us feel good. But how does it make us feel good? The rewarded response is triggered by the surge of the neurotransmitter or the feel-good chemical dopamine in the brain. No one knows the reason. Anyway, research has given many clues in detecting the reasons why music gives rise to intense emotions. Scientists believe that the dopamine rush when listening to music is quite similar to the feeling of satisfying an unfulfilled desire.

If proved right then it rises to the excitement, a rewarded surge of dopamine. In some cases, the feeling of shivers or chill has been felt during a listening experience. Researchers have found that these experiences relate to blood flowing to areas in the brain connected to dopamine surge.

To understand the dopamine link researchers selected eight music lovers who brought along with them to the lab the music that gave them the excitement chill. Jill Suttie explores how music strengthens social bonds. Throughout our history, humans have felt compelled to make art. Ellen Dissanayake explains why. Discover how playing music together can help kids develop empathy. Discover how the arts enhance educational achievement. Learning does. Social contexts are also important, he adds, and can affect your emotional responses.

Not only does its unusual rhythm intrigue me—as a musician, I still have the urge to count it out from time to time—but it reminds me of where I was when I first heard the song: sitting next to a cute guy I had a crush on in college. No doubt my anticipatory pleasure centers were firing away for a multitude of reasons.

And, luckily, now that the pleasure pathways are now deeply embedded in my brain, the song can keep on giving that sweet emotional release. Recent evidence suggests that music that appears complex to the ears but can be easily deciphered by the brain many classical compositions, for example rate the most enjoyable. A recent study published in BioMed Central's open-access journal, BMC Research Notes, suggests that people most appreciate a piece of music containing certain specific patterns that sound complex, but are actually easily simplified and stored by the brain.

This "information compression," said study author Nicholas Hudson, a biologist at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is similar to how music compression software reduces the size of audio files by identifying patterns and removing unnecessary and redundant data.

Hudson used music compression programs to mimic how the brain condenses audio information to analyze a sampling of songs used by another research team in a study that measured how 26 subjects enjoyed various music genres , including classical, jazz, pop, folk, electronica, rock, punk, techno and tango.