Neural Interactions That Give Rise to Musical Pleasure

Music is arguably one of the most potent rewards, existing in all cultures as far back as history dates, and currently reported to be among the most pleasurable stimuli by most individuals. In this review, we summarize the literature to investigate how a mere sequence of sound events can become so pleasurable. We examine the role of the brain’s mesolimbic reward and reinforcement circuitry in processing of rewards, and how the connectivity of this system has become more integrated with higher-order brain regions involved in complex thought to give rise to abstract pleasures. We suggest an integrative role for complex cortical processes with long-existing reinforcement circuits and an interaction between sensory processing and decoding mechanisms and affective processing.