Brain research provides powerful insights into the mechanism of how people like music.

Understanding why human beings like music requires exploring the value of music to the brain.

There are several compelling benefits of music that can explain why we have strong emotional connection to it.

A recent article about music is currently enjoying wide circulation.1 In it, we learn that our brains are hardwired to respond emotionally to music.2 The author illustrates this concept through the story of a man whose brain does not respond emotionally to music. His condition is called musical anhedonia, and it affects roughly 5 percent of people.3

Tests of this man’s brain reveal the cause of his condition. He lacks strong neural connections—the hardwiring between the hearing (auditory) system and the emotional (limbic) system in his brain. In clear and accessible language, the article explains how we come to like music. But not why we like music.4

To answer the why question, we need to explore the evolutionary value of music. Consider this: 95 percent of people do respond emotionally to music, and this response is hardwired into our brains through our genes, so it must be important. So important, in fact, that it promotes the most important goals of evolution: our survival and procreation as a species. Let’s look at several reasons to explain this.5

First, the human brain pays close attention to the near future. It constantly makes predictions based on past experience about what will happen next. This ability is valuable “because an organism can more effectively prepare an appropriate response to an event if that event can be predicted.”6 Like any skill, prediction improves with practice, and music helps the brain practice this ability.

One leading explanation for our emotional response to music is called the prediction model. According to this model, the brain uses its knowledge of musical structure—the rules that determine which sounds typically follow others in a particular style of music—to predict what will come next.7 Our emotional response stems from the music either following these expectations or breaking them. These emotional reactions influence whether we like or dislike a piece of music. They also bind us to the practice of using music to strengthen our prediction skills.

Second, music helps people live and work together. Humans are social creatures. Our social nature developed out of necessity because even a healthy individual cannot face many of nature’s challenges alone. Music plays an important role in helping people connect with one another. This is true across the entire age spectrum. In a nutshell, “Making music together is simultaneously building a community together, which is considered by many to be the most adaptive and the most evolutionarily significant aspect of musical experience worldwide.”8

Because music provides these pro-social benefits, humans have evolved strong emotional connections to it. These emotional ties draw us to music automatically, no conscious thought required. As a result, the benefits of music are available to us at all times.

The strong emotional bond between people and music supports the idea that music is valuable to human life. Two social psychologists who reviewed a variety of studies on this topic summarized their findings this way: “People’s emotional responses to music are intricately tied to the . . . core social phenomena that bind us together into groups. In sum, this work establishes human musicality as a special form of social cognition [social intelligence] and provides . . . direct support for the hypothesis that music evolved as a tool of social living.”9

Third, music can also help our conscious mind manage our inner emotional world. Even when we try to avoid them, our conscious thoughts are often interrupted by unwanted emotions or feelings that arise from the subconscious. At other times, unwelcome thoughts appear and trigger negative emotions. These mental intrusions can sometimes influence our behavior in ways we would prefer to avoid.

Several strategies exist for dealing with this common problem. One of the most effective is engaging with music. Our conscious mind has learned to leverage music’s influence on the subconscious. In fact, the most common reason why people choose to listen to music is to alter their mood.10 Music, therefore, becomes a tool that the conscious mind can use when unwelcome thoughts or feelings threaten to overwhelm it.

Feeling down? Play upbeat music to lift your mood. Feeling anxious? Listen to calm, soothing music to relax. Feeling bored? Try music from an unfamiliar style and explore new sounds.

Our emotional connection to music is so deeply built into the brain that these techniques can be remarkably powerful. They can even help people whose memory and cognition are severely damaged. Research has shown that people with Alzheimer’s disease can still understand the emotional meaning of music and respond appropriately when they hear it.11

1 Love, Shayla. “Why Do We Like Music?” New Yorker. 11 Feb 2026.

2 As neuroscientist Nina Kraus phrases it, “The limbic system has privileged access to hearing centers [of the brain].” Of Sound Mind. 2021: MIT Press, p. 53.

3 Martinez-Molina, Noelia, et. al. “Neural Correlates of Specific Musical Anhedonia.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 31 Oct 2016.

4 More accurately, how or why we have a strong emotional connection, or reaction, to music (after all, we dislike some music).

5 This list is not exhaustive; other possibilities exist.

6 Zatorre, Robert. “Why Do We Love Music?” Cerebrum. 1 Nov 2018.

7 In this instance, familiarity with the syntax (structure) of a musical genre serves as the prior experience upon which predictions are based.

8 Trehub, Sandra, et. al. “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Music and Musicality.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. B370; 2015.

9 Loersch, Chris, and Nathan Arbuckle. “Unraveling the Mystery of Music: Music as an Evolved Group Process.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 105(5); 2013.

10 Salakka, Ilja, et. al. “What Makes Music Memorable? Relationships Between Acoustic Musical Features and Music-Evoked Emotions and Memories in Older Adults.” PLoS ONE 16(5); 2021.

11 “Alzheimer’s patients are able to perceive and understand the emotional connotations of musical material and to react [appropriately] to its listening.” Platel, Hervé, and Mathilde Groussard. “Benefits and Limits of Musical Interventions in Pathological Aging.” In Music and the Aging Brain, edited by L. L. Cuddy, et.al. 2020: Elsevier Academic Press, p. 325.

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