Multi-regional appreciation of music in the brain

Appreciating music is such a universal thing. Whether it's playing one of your favorite guitar covers or serendipitously hearing your favorite song on the radio, music provides both a pleasurable and memorable experience. Think back on remembering your first school dance, your wedding song, or a song that your parents sang to you as a child.

 MOH back in the day playing the Ranard, a Thai xylophone instrument

What's going on in your brain though? Music has been shown to affect several different regions in your brain (see image below), ranging from music production (involving the motor pathway), to listening and following different beats and tones (auditory-limbic and acoustic activated vestibular pathway), and the appreciation of an amazing musical score (visceromotor system). There are quite a few brain regions in the image below, but the main idea is to just consider how many areas are turned on when you're doing something music oriented.

Different pathways involved in music processing (Koelsch, 2014)

While several different brain regions are at play during music processing, the appreciation of music is centered around four main brain regions (reviewed by Koelsch, 2014):

Amygdala (AMYG in the drawing above): the "emotional" area of the brain that reacts differently depending on the mood or tone of music.

Nucleus accumbens (NAc): also activated in response to emotional arousal when listening to music and functionally connected to the auditory region of the cortex after music listening. Ever get the "chills" when you hear a really great vocalist (like Adele)? This brain region is activated when you experience the chills, or are anticipating it. 

Hippocampus: a brain region important for memory formation. Unlike the other mentioned regions, which are activated during other "pleasurable" experiences like food intake, reward drugs, or money, the hippocampus is the only region that is activated by music pleasure. This region is activated following hearing music of varying emotions, and is also important for memory of playing music.

Getting lost in the music (photo courtesy of Jolove55)

Striatum: most recently shown to be related to having more dopamine available after hearing music (dopamine is a major hormone that affects mood and is heavily involved in reward-related behavior). This finding points to why music is so pleasurable.

While this post talks about how the brain is activated following music exposure, it's worth noting that other forms of art probably benefit similar brain regions and potentially release "good vibes" as well. If music isn't your thing, try other avenues of artistic expression (dance, painting, etc.)!

Until next time, happy eating all! Oh, stay tuned next week for a new recipe. I'm debating on trying to make pumpkin banana muffins, or quinoa "meat balls" pasta!

References:
Koelsch, Stefan. Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2014 Mar (15(3): 170-180.