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13 From Perception to Pleasure: Music and Its Neural Substrates--Robert J. Zatorre and Valorie N. Salimpoor
Pages 225-242

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From page 225...
... In this review, we present findings from cognitive neuroscience that bear on the question of how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. First, we identify some of the auditory cortical circuits that are responsible for encoding and storing tonal patterns and discuss evidence that cortical loops between auditory and frontal cortices are important for maintaining musical information in working memory and for the recognition of structural regularities in musical patterns, which then lead to expectancies.
From page 226...
... The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may pos FIGURE 13.1  Ancient bone flute. The flute, made from the radius bone of a vulture, has five finger holes and a notch at the end where it was to be blown; fine lines are precisely incised near the finger holes, probably reflecting measurements used to indicate where the finger holes were to be carved.
From page 227...
... However, unlike the call systems of other species, ours is generative and highly recursive; that is, complex structures are created out of a limited set of primitives in a combinatorial manner by the application of syntactic rules. An important property of both speech and music that is relevant to their innate nature is that they appear in
From page 228...
... . Subsequently, several distinct bidirectional functional streams may be identified: Ventrally, processing streams progress toward targets in superior and inferior temporal sulcus and gyrus, eventually terminating in the inferior frontal cortex.
From page 229...
... . Several neuroimaging studies have pointed to interactions between auditory cortices and inferior frontal regions, especially in the right hemisphere, in the processing of tonal information, in part due to working memory requirements for tonal tasks (Zatorre et al., 1994; Gaab et al., 2003)
From page 230...
... , thus allowing for pitch information to be processed despite irrelevant acoustical variation. Several lines of evidence converge to suggest that a similar neural specialization for pitch may exist in the human auditory cortex, in one or more regions located lateral to core areas (Zatorre, 1988; Patterson et al., 2002; Penagos et al., 2004)
From page 231...
... . The localization of these processes is complex and not fully deciphered, but most likely involves interactions between belt/parabelt auditory cortices and inferior frontal cortices, using the anteroventral pathway described above (Opitz et al., 2002; Schönwiesner et al., 2007)
From page 232...
... A final important phenomenon in considering the role of auditory cortex in complex perceptual processes is that it is also involved in imagery, that is, the phenomenological experience of perception in the absence of a stimulus. Musical imagery is a particularly salient form of this experience, as almost anyone can imagine a musical piece "in the mind's ear." Cognitive psychology has shown that imaginal experiences are psychologically real insofar as they can be quantified, and because they share features of real perception, including temporal accuracy and pitch acuity (Halpern, 1988; Janata, 2012)
From page 233...
... In line with this, many people obtain pleasure from other stimuli that are conceptually meaningful, with little direct relevance for survival, and listening to music is one example. As Darwin observed, music has no readily apparent functional consequence and no clear-cut adaptive function (Hauser and McDermott, 2003)
From page 234...
... and thought to be automated; therefore it serves as a reliable measure of emotional arousal. We measured heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance, body temperature, and blood volume pulse amplitude to track changes that correspond to increasing levels of self-reported pleasure.
From page 235...
... was activity in the striatum, particularly the NAcc; the NAcc also showed increased functional connectivity with the superior temporal gyri (STG) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)
From page 236...
... The closest phenomena to music in the animal kingdom are biologically significant vocalizations. However, these musical sounds are thought to be limited to an adaptive role toward territory defense and mate attraction, rather than for abstract enjoyment (Catchpole and Slater, 1995; Marler, 1999)
From page 237...
... , such that higher monetary bids served as indicators of higher reward value. We were interested in examining the neural activity associated with hearing musical sequences for the first time, and examining the neural activity that can distinguish between musical sequences that become "rewarding" to an individual compared with those that they
From page 238...
... Moreover, consistent with the studies reviewed above linking the STG with the inferior frontal cortex and implicating this region with hierarchical expectations during music processing, we found increased connectivity also of frontal cortex with the NAcc during highly rewarding music processing. These corticostriatal interactions exemplify the cognitive nature of rewarding responses to music and help to explain why the complexities of the highly evolved human brain allow for the experience of pleasure to an abstract sequence of sound patterns.
From page 239...
... Therefore, it is likely that the cerebral cortex and striatum work together to make predictions about potentially rewarding future events and assess the outcome of these predictions. Additional support implicating the caudate in anticipation comes from other studies that implicate the dorsal striatum in anticipating desirable stimuli, when the behavior is habitual and expected (Boileau et al., 2006; Belin and Everitt, 2008)
From page 240...
... These expectancies are rooted in templates derived from an individual's history of listening, which are likely stored in auditory cortices. The reward system, phylogenetically old, may be most parsimoniously explained as a mechanism to promote certain adaptive behaviors, with dopaminergic circuits playing a critical role in establishing salience and reward value of relevant stimuli and the sensations generated by them.
From page 241...
... Our ability to enjoy music can perhaps now be seen as a little less mysterious than Darwin thought, when viewed as the outcome of our human mental machinery, both its phylogenetically ancient, survival-oriented circuits and its more recently evolved cortical loops that allow us to represent information, imagine outcomes, make predictions, and act upon our stored knowledge. We have little doubt that the ancient musicians, armed with the same machinery as us, and able to coax patterns of tones from a vulture bone, experienced and communicated pleasure, beauty, and wonder, just as much as we do today.


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