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........

© Psychology Today