Music as a coevolved system for social bonding

Musicality and social cognition in dementia: clinical and anatomical associations

Human musicality might have co-evolved with social cognition abilities, but common neuroanatomical substrates remain largely unclear. In behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, social cognitive abilities are profoundly impaired, whereas these are typically spared in Alzheimer's disease. If musicality indeed shares a neuroanatomical basis with social cognition, it could be hypothesized that clinical and neuroanatomical associations of musicality and social cognition should differ between these causes of dementia. We recruited 73 participants from the Amsterdam Dementia Cohort (n = 30 female; aged 50-78), of whom 23 had behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, 22 Alzheimer's disease and 28 were healthy controls. Musicality was assessed using a music-emotion recognition test, melody, tempo, accent and tuning subscores, a musicality summed score, the identification of auditory hedonic phenotypes and music emotion induction using skin conductance responses. Social cognition was assessed across multiple levels, including emotion recognition, theory of mind, socio-emotional sensitivity and understanding of social norms. We used ANCOVA to investigate subgroup differences in musicality and social cognition and linear regressions to investigate associations between musicality and social cognition. All analyses were adjusted for age, sex, musical training and mini mental state examination. Finally, we performed voxel-based morphometry analyses on T1-weighted MRI to study whether regions for musicality and social cognition overlapped anatomically. We found that patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia performed worse on music-emotion recognition (all P < 0.001) and tempo recognition (all P < 0.05) compared with Alzheimer's disease and on musicality summed score (all P = 0.02) compared to controls only. Furthermore, patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia had lower mean skin conductance responses during emotion-inducing music, compared to Alzheimer's disease (all P < 0.045). Worse music emotion recognition scores were associated with worse facial emotion recognition (P < 0.0001), worse theory of mind (P = 0.0005) and worse understanding of social norms (P = 0.01). Melody and tempo recognition were associated with facial emotion recognition and theory of mind, and accent recognition was associated with the theory of mind. Music emotion recognition and tempo recognition were also associated with executive functions. Worse music emotion recognition, melody recognition, tempo recognition, facial emotion recognition and theory of mind scores were all related to atrophy in the anterior temporal regions and the fusiform gyri, which play a role in multisensory integration, and worse tempo recognition was associated with atrophy of the anterior cingulate cortex. These results support the idea that musicality and social cognition may share a neurobiological basis, which may be vulnerable in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia.

A framework for joint music making: Behavioral findings, neural processes, and computational models

Across different epochs and societies, humans occasionally gather to jointly make music. This universal form of collective behavior is as fascinating as it is fragmentedly understood. As the interest in joint music making (JMM) rapidly grows, we review the state-of-the-art of this emerging science, blending behavioral, neural, and computational contributions. We present a conceptual framework synthesizing research on JMM within four components. The framework is centered upon interpersonal coordination, a crucial requirement for JMM. The other components imply the influence of individuals' (past) experience, (current) social factors, and (future) goals on real-time coordination. Our aim is to promote the development of JMM research by organizing existing work, inspiring new questions, and fostering accessibility for researchers belonging to other research communities.

Benefits of an online group dance program for adolescents' social bonding and wellbeing

INTRODUCTION

The Covid-19 pandemic and its ensuing effects on mental health made it clearer than ever that social bonds are critical for survival, flourishing, and mental wellbeing. Experimental laboratory-based research with children and adults shows that activities involving movement alignment and joint action, such as dance, can facilitate social bonds.

METHODS

This study examined whether an online group dance intervention positively affects social bonding and wellbeing using a randomized control design. Participants were 58 UK adolescents aged 11-16 years (N = 52 girls, 75% White, 7% Asian/Asian British, 18% Mixed-Other), randomly assigned to an online intervention or waitlist control group. Participants in the intervention group completed an online 5-week hip-hop dance program during the Covid-19 pandemic in January to February 2021. Measures of social bonding, wellbeing, and future orientation were taken at the beginning and end of the program.

RESULTS

Linear mixed model analyses examining group × timepoint interaction showed greater increase in social bonding (p < .0001), and wellbeing (p < .0001) in the intervention vs control group. Moreover, increases in bonding significantly predicted increases in wellbeing (p < .0001), and increases in bonding (p = .03) and wellbeing (p = .0002) significantly predicted increases in the adolescents' hope for the future.

CONCLUSIONS

These data, collected at a time of mass social isolation, show that a 5-week-long online dance activity can help adolescents forge stronger social bonds, and improve their wellbeing and future orientation. Our findings suggest that the wellbeing and future orientation benefits of group dance may stem from having stronger social connectedness, opening up avenues for future research and interventions.

The shared genetic architecture and evolution of human language and musical rhythm

This study aimed to test theoretical predictions over biological underpinnings of previously documented phenotypic correlations between human language-related and musical rhythm traits. Here, after identifying significant genetic correlations between rhythm, dyslexia and various language-related traits, we adapted multivariate methods to capture genetic signals common to genome-wide association studies of rhythm (N = 606,825) and dyslexia (N = 1,138,870). The results revealed 16 pleiotropic loci (P < 5 × 10-8) jointly associated with rhythm impairment and dyslexia, and intricate shared genetic and neurobiological architectures. The joint genetic signal was enriched for foetal and adult brain cell-specific regulatory regions, highlighting complex cellular composition in their shared underpinnings. Local genetic correlation with a key white matter tract (the left superior longitudinal fasciculus-I) substantiated hypotheses about auditory-motor connectivity as a genetically influenced, evolutionarily relevant neural endophenotype common to rhythm and language processing. Overall, we provide empirical evidence of multiple aspects of shared biology linking language and musical rhythm, contributing novel insight into the evolutionary relationships between human musicality and linguistic communication traits.

Music communicates social emotions: Evidence from 750 music excerpts

Humans perceive a range of basic emotional connotations from music, such as joy, sadness, and fear, which can be decoded from structural characteristics of music, such as rhythm, harmony, and timbre. However, despite theory and evidence that music has multiple social functions, little research has examined whether music conveys emotions specifically associated with social status and social connection. This investigation aimed to determine whether the social emotions of dominance and affiliation are perceived in music and whether structural features of music predict social emotions, just as they predict basic emotions. Participants (N = 1513) listened to subsets of 750 music excerpts and provided ratings of energy arousal, tension arousal, valence, dominance, and affiliation. Ratings were modelled based on ten structural features of music. Dominance and affiliation were readily perceived in music and predicted by structural features including rhythm, harmony, dynamics, and timbre. In turn, energy arousal, tension arousal and valence were also predicted by musical structure. We discuss the results in view of current models of music and emotion and propose research to illuminate the significance of social emotions in music.

Beat-based dancing to music has evolutionary foundations in advanced vocal learning

Dancing to music is ancient and widespread in human cultures. While dance shows great cultural diversity, it often involves nonvocal rhythmic movements synchronized to musical beats in a predictive and tempo-flexible manner. To date, the only nonhuman animals known to spontaneously move to music in this way are parrots. This paper proposes that human-parrot similarities in movement to music and in the neurobiology of advanced vocal learning hold clues to the evolutionary foundations of human dance. The proposal draws on recent research on the neurobiology of parrot vocal learning by Jarvis and colleagues and on a recent cortical model for speech motor control by Hickock and colleagues. These two lines of work are synthesized to suggest that gene regulation changes associated with the evolution of a dorsal laryngeal pitch control pathway in ancestral humans fortuitously strengthened auditory-parietal cortical connections that support beat-based rhythmic processing. More generally, the proposal aims to explain how and why the evolution of strong forebrain auditory-motor integration in the service of learned vocal control led to a capacity and proclivity to synchronize nonvocal movements to the beat. The proposal specifies cortical brain pathways implicated in the origins of human beat-based dancing and leads to testable predictions and suggestions for future research.

Dance as mindful movement: a perspective from motor learning and predictive coding

Defining "dance" is challenging, because many distinct classes of human movement may be considered dance in a broad sense. Although the most obvious category is rhythmic dancing to a musical beat, other categories of expressive movement such as dance improvisation, pantomime, tai chi, or Japanese butoh suggest that a more inclusive conception of human dance is needed. Here we propose that a specific type of conscious awareness plays an overarching role in most forms of expressive movement and can be used to define dance (in the broad sense). We can briefly summarize this broader notion of dance as "mindful movement." However, to make this conception explicit and testable, we need an empirically verifiable characterization of "mindful movement." We propose such a characterization in terms of predictive coding and procedural learning theory: mindful movement involves a "suspension" of automatization. When first learning a new motor skill, we are highly conscious of our movements, and this is reflected in neural activation patterns. As skill increases, automatization and overlearning occurs, involving a progressive suppression of conscious awareness. Overlearned, habitual movement patterns become mostly unconscious, entering consciousness only when mistakes or surprising outcomes occur. In mindful movement, this automatization process is essentially inverted or suspended, reactivating previously unconscious details of movement in the conscious workspace, and crucially enabling a renewed aesthetic attention to such details. This wider perspective on dance has important implications for potential animal analogs of human dance and leads to multiple lines of experimental exploration.

Individual differences in music-induced interpersonal synchronization and self-other integration: the role of creativity and empathy

It has been demonstrated that moving together in synchrony to music makes us feel connected. Yet, little is known about the individual differences that shape the relationship between interpersonal synchronization to music and social bonding. The present research tests the hypothesis that this association is influenced by differences in empathy and creativity-two highly relevant factors in many musical activities. We implemented a synchronization task featuring a virtual drummer and measured self-other integration (SOI), a core component of social bonding. We employed a dual-measurement paradigm, incorporating both an explicit assessment (Inclusion of Other in the Self scale) and an implicit assessment (joint-Simon effect) of SOI. Surprisingly, our analysis did not reveal explicit and implicit measurements correlating, nor were they similarly affected by interpersonal synchronization. This raises questions about the assessment of SOI in interpersonal synchronization experiments. Furthermore, we observed no moderating role of empathy or creativity in the association between interpersonal synchronization and SOI. Nevertheless, we found creativity to correlate with SOI. In light of this finding, we recommend placing greater emphasis on creativity as a decisive factor in the study of musical interaction.

Revisiting the musical reminiscence bump: insights from neurocognitive and social brain development in adolescence

Music listening is enjoyed across the lifespan and around the world. This has spurred many theories on the evolutionary purpose of music. The Music for Social Bonding hypothesis posits that the human capacity to make music evolved for the purpose of creating and preserving relationships between one another. Considering different time periods of music use across the lifespan, adolescence is especially a period of social reorientation away from family towards peers, characterized by new social bonds and increased prosocial behavior. This shift is accompanied by notable structural and functional changes in brain networks supporting reward processing and prosocial behavior. Reviewing the extant literature on developmental cognitive neuroscience and adolescent music use, we propose that neurocognitive changes in the reward system make adolescence an ideal developmental time window for investigating interactions between prosocial behavior and reward processing, as adolescence constitutes a time of relative increase in music reward valuation. Testing this hypothesis may clarify our understanding of developmental trajectories in music reward valuation, and offer insights into why music from adults' adolescence holds a great deal of personal significance.

Using music to assist language learning in autistic children with minimal verbal language: The MAP feasibility RCT

LAY ABSTRACT

Research has shown that autistic individuals often have unusually good musical skills and that combining words and music helps autistic individuals to focus on spoken words. This study tests the idea that music will help with early language learning of preschool autistic children. The results show that when caregivers sing words to autistic children, the children pay more attention to the caregiver than when the words are spoken and that they learn word combinations more easily.

The underlying architecture of musical sensibility: One general factor, four subdimensions, and strong genetic effects

Current evidence suggests moderate heritability of music phenotypes, such as music listening and achievement. However, other fundamental traits underlying people's interest in music and its relevance for their lives have been largely neglected, and little is known about the genetic and environmental etiology of what we refer to as musical sensibility-the tendency to be emotionally and aesthetically engaged by music. This study investigated the latent structure, as well as the genetic and environmental factors influencing individual variability in multiple domains of musical sensibility, and the etiological architecture of the relationship between the dimensions. To this end, we used phenotypic confirmatory factor analytic and biometric twin modeling to analyze self-reported ratings on four dimensions of musical sensibility in a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 2600). The results indicate a phenotypic higher-order structure, whereby both the resulting general musical sensibility factor and the conceptually narrower domains were strongly heritable (49-65%). Multivariate analyses of the genetic and environmental covariance further revealed substantial overlap in genetic variance across domains.

Lights on music cognition: A systematic and critical review of fNIRS applications and future perspectives

Research investigating the neural processes related to music perception and production constitutes a well-established field within the cognitive neurosciences. While most neuroimaging tools have limitations in studying the complexity of musical experiences, functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) represents a promising, relatively new tool for studying music processes in both laboratory and ecological settings, which is also suitable for both typical and pathological populations across development. Here we systematically review fNIRS studies on music cognition, highlighting prospects and potentialities. We also include an overview of fNIRS basic theory, together with a brief comparison to characteristics of other neuroimaging tools. Fifty-nine studies meeting inclusion criteria (i.e., using fNIRS with music as the primary stimulus) are presented across five thematic sections. Critical discussion of methodology leads us to propose guidelines of good practices aiming for robust signal analyses and reproducibility. A continuously updated world map is proposed, including basic information from studies meeting the inclusion criteria. It provides an organized, accessible, and updatable reference database, which could serve as a catalyst for future collaborations within the community. In conclusion, fNIRS shows potential for investigating cognitive processes in music, particularly in ecological contexts and with special populations, aligning with current research priorities in music cognition.

Music Listening as Exploratory Behavior: From Dispositional Reactions to Epistemic Interactions with the Sonic World

Listening to music can span a continuum from passive consumption to active exploration, relying on processes of coping with the sounds as well as higher-level processes of sense-making. Revolving around the major questions of "what" and "how" to explore, this paper takes a naturalistic stance toward music listening, providing tools to objectively describe the underlying mechanisms of musical sense-making by weakening the distinction between music and non-music. Starting from a non-exclusionary conception of "coping" with the sounds, it stresses the exploratory approach of treating music as a sound environment to be discovered by an attentive listener. Exploratory listening, in this view, is an open-minded and active process, not dependent on simply recalling pre-existing knowledge or information that reduces cognitive processing efforts but having a high cognitive load due to the need for highly focused attention and perceptual readiness. Music, explored in this way, is valued for its complexity, surprisingness, novelty, incongruity, puzzlingness, and patterns, relying on processes of selection, differentiation, discrimination, and identification.

Emotional palette: a computational mapping of aesthetic experiences evoked by visual art

Despite the evolutionary history and cultural significance of visual art, the structure of aesthetic experiences it evokes has only attracted recent scientific attention. What kinds of experience does visual art evoke? Guided by Semantic Space Theory, we identify the concepts that most precisely describe people's aesthetic experiences using new computational techniques. Participants viewed 1457 artworks sampled from diverse cultural and historical traditions and reported on the emotions they felt and their perceived artwork qualities. Results show that aesthetic experiences are high-dimensional, comprising 25 categories of feeling states. Extending well beyond hedonism and broad evaluative judgments (e.g., pleasant/unpleasant), aesthetic experiences involve emotions of daily social living (e.g., "sad", "joy"), the imagination (e.g., "psychedelic", "mysterious"), profundity (e.g., "disgust", "awe"), and perceptual qualities attributed to the artwork (e.g., "whimsical", "disorienting"). Aesthetic emotions and perceptual qualities jointly predict viewers' liking of the artworks, indicating that we conceptualize aesthetic experiences in terms of the emotions we feel but also the qualities we perceive in the artwork. Aesthetic experiences are often mixed and lie along continuous gradients between categories rather than within discrete clusters. Our collection of artworks is visualized within an interactive map ( https://barradeau.com/2021/emotions-map/ ), revealing the high-dimensional space of aesthetic experiences associated with visual art.

The origins and development of aesthetics

All people (and some other animals) have aesthetic responses to sensory stimulation, responses of emotional pleasure or displeasure. These emotions vary from one person and culture to another, yet they share a common mechanism. To survive, an adaptive animal (as opposed to a tropic animal) needs to become comfortable with normality and to have slight abnormalities draw attention to themselves. Walking through a jungle you need to notice a tiger from a single stripe: if you must wait to see the whole animal, you are unlikely to survive. In Homo sapiens, the brain's adaptive neurochemistry does this naturally, partly because the brain's neuronal networks are structured to react efficiently to fractal structures, structures that shape much of nature. In addition, previous associations may turn a slight variation from normal into feelings of either pleasure or danger. The details of these responses-what is normal and what variations feel like-will depend upon an individual's experience, but the mechanism is the same, no matter whether a person is tasting a wine, seeing a face or landscape, or hearing a song. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'.

Twin Data Support a Sensitive Period for Singing Ability

As with many other musical traits, the social environment is a key influence on the development of singing ability. While the familial singing environment is likely to be formative, its role relative to other environmental influences such as training is unclear. We used structural equation modeling to test relationships among demographic characteristics, familial environmental variables (early and current singing with family), vocal training, and singing ability in a large, previously documented sample of Australian twins (N = 1163). Notably, early singing with family, and to a lesser extent vocal training, predicted singing ability, whereas current singing with family did not. Early familial singing also mediated the relationship between sex and singing ability, with men who sang less with family during childhood showing poorer ability. Bivariate twin models between early familial singing and singing ability showed the phenotypic correlation was largely explained by shared environmental influences. This raises the possibility of a sensitive period for singing ability, with sociocultural expectations around singing potentially differentiating the developmental trajectories of this skill for men and women.

Should absolute pitch be considered as a unique kind of absolute sensory judgment in humans? A systematic and theoretical review of the literature

Absolute pitch is the name given to the rare ability to identify a musical note in an automatic and effortless manner without the need for a reference tone. Those individuals with absolute pitch can, for example, name the note they hear, identify all of the tones of a given chord, and/or name the pitches of everyday sounds, such as car horns or sirens. Hence, absolute pitch can be seen as providing a rare example of absolute sensory judgment in audition. Surprisingly, however, the intriguing question of whether such an ability presents unique features in the domain of sensory perception, or whether instead similar perceptual skills also exist in other sensory domains, has not been explicitly addressed previously. In this paper, this question is addressed by systematically reviewing research on absolute pitch using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method. Thereafter, we compare absolute pitch with two rare types of sensory experience, namely synaesthesia and eidetic memory, to understand if and how these phenomena exhibit similar features to absolute pitch. Furthermore, a common absolute perceptual ability that has been often compared to absolute pitch, namely colour perception, is also discussed. Arguments are provided supporting the notion that none of the examined abilities can be considered like absolute pitch. Therefore, we conclude by suggesting that absolute pitch does indeed appear to constitute a unique kind of absolute sensory judgment in humans, and we discuss some open issues and novel directions for future research in absolute pitch.

Human musical capacity and products should have been induced by the hominin-specific combination of several biosocial features: A three-phase scheme on socio-ecological, cognitive, and cultural evolution

Various selection pressures have shaped human uniqueness, for instance, music. When and why did musical universality and diversity emerge? Our hypothesis is that "music" initially originated from manipulative calls with limited musical elements. Thereafter, vocalizations became more complex and flexible along with a greater degree of social learning. Finally, constructed musical instruments and the language faculty resulted in diverse and context-specific music. Music precursors correspond to vocal communication among nonhuman primates, songbirds, and cetaceans. To place this scenario in hominin history, a three-phase scheme for music evolution is presented herein. We emphasize (1) the evolution of sociality and life history in australopithecines, (2) the evolution of cognitive and learning abilities in early/middle Homo, and (3) cultural evolution, primarily in Homo sapiens. Human musical capacity and products should be due to the hominin-specific combination of several biosocial features, including bipedalism, stable pair bonding, alloparenting, expanded brain size, and sexual selection.

Does a participatory live music practice support nurses to deliver compassionate care to hospitalised patients? A qualitative study

AIM

To gain more insight into how nurses experience a participatory live music practice in relation to their ability to deliver compassionate care to medically hospitalised patients.

DESIGN

Qualitative interpretive design.

METHODS

Sixteen nurses participating in a live music practice with patients were interviewed using in-depth interviews with open-ended questions. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and subsequently coded. Theory-driven inductive and deductive approaches were applied in thematic data analysis.

RESULTS

We identified four themes: (1) Nurses' empathy and compassion; (2) The caring nurse-patient relationship; (3) Person-centred approaches to care and (4) Nurses' subjective wellbeing. By observing patients' reactions to the music, nurses described that they obtained a deeper insight and understanding of patients' emotional wellbeing. These observations led to increased feelings of compassion in patient contact and stimulated informal communication between nurses and patients through a sense of shared humanity. According to nurses, these aspects positively affected collaboration with patients in delivering care and stimulated them to pursue person-centred approaches to care. Participating in the live music practice also positively affected nurses' wellbeing, enhanced relaxation and created an ambiance in which compassion could be expressed.

CONCLUSION

A live music practice can positively contribute to the delivery of compassionate care by providing meaningful shared moments that increase feelings of empathy and compassion and strengthen the caring relationship.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION

Offering a live music practice at the ward and bedside offers a unique possibility to enhance engagement in person-centred, compassionate care.

IMPACT

While compassion and compassionate care are essential component of nursing, nurses often experience multiple barriers to its provision in daily practice. An innovative way to stimulate compassionate care is through the participation of nurses and patients in a live music practice, providing a meaningful moment shared between them. This stimulates feelings of shared humanity and bonding in the caring relationship.

REPORTING METHOD

The COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research (COREQ). No Patient or Public Contribution.

Enhancing musical pleasure through shared musical experience

Music and social interactions represent two of the most important sources of pleasure in our lives, both engaging the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. However, there is limited understanding regarding whether and how sharing a musical activity in a social context influences and modifies individuals' rewarding experiences. Here, we aimed at (1) modulating the pleasure derived from music under different social scenarios and (2) further investigating its impact on reward-related prosocial behavior and memory. Across three online experiments, we simulated a socially shared music listening and found that participants' music reward was significantly modulated by the social context, with higher reported pleasure for greater levels of social sharing. Furthermore, the increased pleasure reported by the participants positively influenced prosocial behavior and memory outcomes, highlighting the facilitating role of socially boosted reward. These findings provide evidence about the rewarding nature of socially driven music experiences, with important potential implications in educational and clinical settings.

Signatures of speech and song: "Universal" links despite cultural diversity

Equitable collaboration between culturally diverse scientists reveals that acoustic fingerprints of human speech and song share parallel relationships across the globe.

Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report

Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a "musi-linguistic" continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.

Global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories

Music is a universal yet diverse cultural trait transmitted between generations. The extent to which global musical diversity traces cultural and demographic history, however, is unresolved. Using a global musical dataset of 5242 songs from 719 societies, we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that music contains geographical and historical structures analogous to linguistic and genetic diversity. After creating a matched dataset of musical, genetic, and linguistic data spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, we show that global musical similarities are only weakly and inconsistently related to linguistic or genetic histories, with some regional exceptions such as within Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are largely distinct from some non-musical aspects of human history.

The psychophysiology of music-based interventions and the experience of pain

In modern times there is increasing acceptance that music-based interventions are useful aids in the clinical treatment of a range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including helping to reduce the perception of pain. Indeed, the belief that music, whether listening or performing, can alter human pain experiences has a long history, dating back to the ancient Greeks, and its potential healing properties have long been appreciated by indigenous cultures around the world. The subjective experience of acute or chronic pain is complex, influenced by many intersecting physiological and psychological factors, and it is therefore to be expected that the impact of music therapy on the pain experience may vary from one situation to another, and from one person to another. Where pain persists and becomes chronic, aberrant central processing is a key feature associated with the ongoing pain experience. Nonetheless, beneficial effects of exposure to music on pain relief have been reported across a wide range of acute and chronic conditions, and it has been shown to be effective in neonates, children and adults. In this comprehensive review we examine the various neurochemical, physiological and psychological factors that underpin the impact of music on the pain experience, factors that potentially operate at many levels - the periphery, spinal cord, brainstem, limbic system and multiple areas of cerebral cortex. We discuss the extent to which these factors, individually or in combination, influence how music affects both the quality and intensity of pain, noting that there remains controversy about the respective roles that diverse central and peripheral processes play in this experience. Better understanding of the mechanisms that underlie music's impact on pain perception together with insights into central processing of pain should aid in developing more effective synergistic approaches when music therapy is combined with clinical treatments. The ubiquitous nature of music also facilitates application from the therapeutic environment into daily life, for ongoing individual and social benefit.

The origins of musicality in the motion of primates

Animals communicate acoustically to report location, identity, and emotive state to conspecifics. Acoustic signals can also function as displays to potential mates and as territorial advertisement. Music and song are terms often reserved only for humans and birds, but elements of both forms of acoustic display are also found in non-human primates. While culture, bonding, and side-effects all factor into the emergence of musicality, biophysical insights into what might be signaled by specific acoustic features are less well understood.

OBJECTIVES

Here we probe the origins of musicality by evaluating the links between musical features (structural complexity, rhythm, interval, and tone) and a variety of potential ecological drivers of its evolution across primate species. Alongside other hypothesized causes (e.g. territoriality, sexual selection), we evaluated the hypothesis that perilous arboreal locomotion might favor musical calling in primates as a signal of capacities underlying spatio-temporal precision in motor tasks.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We used musical features found in spectrographs of vocalizations of 58 primate species and corresponding measures of locomotion, diet, ranging, and mating. Leveraging phylogenetic information helped us impute missing data and control for relatedness of species while selecting among candidate multivariate regression models.

RESULTS

Results indicated that rapid inter-substrate arboreal locomotion is highly correlated with several metrics of music-like signaling. Diet, alongside mate-choice and range size, emerged as factors that also correlated with complex calling patterns.

DISCUSSION

These results support the hypothesis that musical calling may function as a signal, to neighbors or potential mates, of accuracy in landing on relatively narrow targets.

The human auditory system uses amplitude modulation to distinguish music from speech

Music and speech are complex and distinct auditory signals that are both foundational to the human experience. The mechanisms underpinning each domain are widely investigated. However, what perceptual mechanism transforms a sound into music or speech and how basic acoustic information is required to distinguish between them remain open questions. Here, we hypothesized that a sound's amplitude modulation (AM), an essential temporal acoustic feature driving the auditory system across processing levels, is critical for distinguishing music and speech. Specifically, in contrast to paradigms using naturalistic acoustic signals (that can be challenging to interpret), we used a noise-probing approach to untangle the auditory mechanism: If AM rate and regularity are critical for perceptually distinguishing music and speech, judging artificially noise-synthesized ambiguous audio signals should align with their AM parameters. Across 4 experiments (N = 335), signals with a higher peak AM frequency tend to be judged as speech, lower as music. Interestingly, this principle is consistently used by all listeners for speech judgments, but only by musically sophisticated listeners for music. In addition, signals with more regular AM are judged as music over speech, and this feature is more critical for music judgment, regardless of musical sophistication. The data suggest that the auditory system can rely on a low-level acoustic property as basic as AM to distinguish music from speech, a simple principle that provokes both neurophysiological and evolutionary experiments and speculations.

How music-induced emotions affect sexual attraction: evolutionary implications

More than a century ago, Darwin proposed a putative role for music in sexual attraction (i.e., sex appeal), a hypothesis that has recently gained traction in the field of music psychology. In his writings, Darwin particularly emphasized the charming aspects of music. Across a broad range of cultures, music has a profound impact on humans' feelings, thoughts and behavior. Human mate choice is determined by the interplay of several factors. A number of studies have shown that music and musicality (i.e., the ability to produce and enjoy music) exert a positive influence on the evaluation of potential sexual partners. Here, we critically review the latest empirical literature on how and why music and musicality affect sexual attraction by considering the role of music-induced emotion and arousal in listeners as well as other socio-biological mechanisms. Following a short overview of current theories about the origins of musicality, we present studies that examine the impact of music and musicality on sexual attraction in different social settings. We differentiate between emotion-based influences related to the subjective experience of music as sound and effects associated with perceived musical ability or creativity in a potential partner. By integrating studies using various behavioral methods, we link current research strands that investigate how music influences sexual attraction and suggest promising avenues for future research.

The acceptability of Songs of Love for youth living with chronic pain

OBJECTIVES

Music is helpful to young people in healthcare contexts, but less is known about the acceptability of music-based interventions for youth living at home with chronic pain who may be struggling to attend school and participate in social activities. The Songs of Love (SOL) foundation is a national nonprofit organization that creates free, personalized, original songs for youth facing health challenges. The aims of this study were (1) to assess acceptability of SOL from the perspective of youth with chronic pain receiving a song and singer-songwriters who created the songs, and (2) to explore the role of music more generally in the lives of young people living with pain.

METHODS

Twenty-three people participated. Fifteen youth (mean age 16.8) were interviewed and received a song, and six singer-songwriters were interviewed about creating the songs. (Two additional people participated in pilot interviews.) Acceptability was assessed by (1) proportion of youth who participated in a second interview about their song and (2) results of reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) to determine acceptability. Themes addressing the role of music in the lives of youth with pain were also explored using RTA.

RESULTS

The program was acceptable as 12 of 15 youth (80 %) participated in second interviews and themes met the definition of acceptability. Three themes addressing the role of music in the lives of youth living with pain were identified.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the first report of the acceptability and experience of SOL and contributes to research on the benefits of music for pain management.

Iterative learning experiments can help elucidate music's origins

Anglada-Tort et al. Current Biology, 33, 1472-1486.e12, (2023) conducted a large-scale iterative learning study with cross-cultural human participants to understand how musical structure emerges. Together with archaeological, developmental, historical cross-cultural music data, and cross-species studies we can begin to elucidate the origins of music.

Neural dynamics of predictive timing and motor engagement in music listening

Why do humans spontaneously dance to music? To test the hypothesis that motor dynamics reflect predictive timing during music listening, we created melodies with varying degrees of rhythmic predictability (syncopation) and asked participants to rate their wanting-to-move (groove) experience. Degree of syncopation and groove ratings are quadratically correlated. Magnetoencephalography data showed that, while auditory regions track the rhythm of melodies, beat-related 2-hertz activity and neural dynamics at delta (1.4 hertz) and beta (20 to 30 hertz) rates in the dorsal auditory pathway code for the experience of groove. Critically, the left sensorimotor cortex coordinates these groove-related delta and beta activities. These findings align with the predictions of a neurodynamic model, suggesting that oscillatory motor engagement during music listening reflects predictive timing and is effected by interaction of neural dynamics along the dorsal auditory pathway.

Pace setting as an adaptive precursor of rhythmic musicality

Human musicality (the capacity to make and appreciate music) is difficult to explain in evolutionary terms, though many theories attempt to do so. This paper focuses on musicality's potential adaptive precursors, particularly as related to rhythm. It suggests that pace setting for walking and running long distances over extended time periods (endurance locomotion, EL) is a good candidate for an adaptive building block of rhythmic musicality. The argument is as follows: (1) over time, our hominin lineage developed a host of adaptations for efficient EL; (2) the ability to set and maintain a regular pace was a crucial adaptation in the service of EL, providing proximate rewards for successful execution; (3) maintaining a pace in EL occasioned hearing, feeling, and attending to regular rhythmic patterns; (4) these rhythmic patterns, as well as proximate rewards for maintaining them, became disassociated from locomotion and entrained in new proto-musical contexts. Support for the model and possibilities for generating predictions to test it are discussed.

Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization

Social groups in various social species are organized with hierarchical structures that shape group dynamics and the nature of within-group interactions. In-group social bonding, exemplified by grooming behaviors among animals and collective rituals and team-building activities in human societies, is recognized as a practical adaptive strategy to foster group harmony and stabilize hierarchical structures in both human and nonhuman animal groups. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of social bonding on hierarchical groups remain largely unexplored. Here, we conducted simultaneous neural recordings on human participants engaged in-group communications within small hierarchical groups (n = 528, organized into 176 three-person groups) to investigate how social bonding influenced hierarchical interactions and neural synchronizations. We differentiated interpersonal interactions between individuals of different (inter-status) or same (intra-status) social status and observed distinct effects of social bonding on inter-status and intra-status interactions. Specifically, social bonding selectively increased frequent and rapid information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization for inter-status dyads but not intra-status dyads. Furthermore, social bonding facilitated unidirectional neural alignment from group leader to followers, enabling group leaders to predictively align their prefrontal activity with that of followers. These findings provide insights into how social bonding influences hierarchical dynamics and neural synchronization while highlighting the role of social status in shaping the strength and nature of social bonding experiences in human groups.

Perceptual representations mediate effects of stimulus properties on liking for music

Perceptual pleasure and its concomitant hedonic value play an essential role in everyday life, motivating behavior and thus influencing how individuals choose to spend their time and resources. However, how pleasure arises from perception of sensory information remains relatively poorly understood. In particular, research has neglected the question of how perceptual representations mediate the relationships between stimulus properties and liking (e.g., stimulus symmetry can only affect liking if it is perceived). The present research addresses this gap for the first time, analyzing perceptual and liking ratings of 96 nonmusicians (power of 0.99) and finding that perceptual representations mediate effects of feature-based and information-based stimulus properties on liking for a novel set of melodies varying in balance, contour, symmetry, or complexity. Moreover, variability due to individual differences and stimuli accounts for most of the variance in liking. These results have broad implications for psychological research on sensory valuation, advocating a more explicit account of random variability and the mediating role of perceptual representations of stimulus properties.

Enjoying art: an evolutionary perspective on the esthetic experience from emotion elicitors

The ubiquity of human art prompted evolutionary psychologists to explore its origins as a potential adaptation to the environment. Here we focus on emotionally charged art and posit that affective affordances embedded into some artworks play a pivotal role in explaining why these artworks are enjoyed from an evolutionary perspective. Such features, recurring in various art forms, are interpreted as cues to the emotional state of others, enabling art consumers to engage in empathetic experiences and vicarious emotions. We explore the adaptive value of deriving pleasure from vicarious emotions, while also addressing the seemingly counterintuitive enjoyment of artworks that evoke negative emotions. We discuss the appreciation of vicarious emotions irrespective of their valence and maintain this appreciation to hold adaptive significance for three key reasons. Firstly, it aids art consumers in refining their interpretational schemes of internal states, potentially enhancing emotional regulation skills. Secondly, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the emotions of others, thereby fostering emotional intelligence and empathy. Lastly, the enjoyment of affectively charged artworks reinforces social cohesion by harmonizing the emotions of group members. This perspective provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the evolutionary underpinnings of the human capacity for art appreciation and emotional engagement.

Motivated cognitive control during cued anticipation and receipt of unfamiliar musical themes: An fMRI study

Principal themes, particularly choruses in pop songs, hold a central place in human music. Singing along with a familiar chorus tends to elicit pleasure and a sense of belonging, especially in group settings. These principal themes, which frequently serve as musical rewards, are commonly preceded by distinctive musical cues. Such cues guide listeners' attention and amplify their motivation to receive the impending themes. Despite the significance of cue-theme sequences in music, the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of these sequences in unfamiliar songs remain underexplored. To fill this research gap, we employed fMRI to examine neural activity during the cued anticipation of unfamiliar musical themes and the subsequent receipt of their opening phrase. Twenty-three Taiwanese participants underwent fMRI scans while listening to excerpts of Korean slow pop songs unfamiliar to them, with lyrics they could not understand. Our findings revealed distinct temporal dynamics in lateral frontal activity, with posterior regions being more active during theme anticipation and anterior regions during theme receipt. During anticipation, participants reported substantial increases in arousal levels, aligning with the observed enhanced activity in the midbrain, ventral striatum, inferior frontal junction, and premotor regions. We posit that when motivational musical cues are detected, the ventral striatum and inferior frontal junction played a role in attention allocation, while premotor regions may be engaged in monitoring the theme's entry. Notably, both the anticipation and receipt of themes were associated with pronounced activity in the frontal eye field, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, dorsal caudate, and salience network. Overall, our results highlight that within a naturalistic music-listening context, the dynamic interplay between the frontoparietal, dopaminergic midbrain-striatal, and salience networks could allow for precise adjustments of control demands based on the cue-theme structure in unfamiliar songs.

Love songs and serenades: a theoretical review of music and romantic relationships

In this theoretical review, we examine how the roles of music in mate choice and social bonding are expressed in romantic relationships. Darwin's Descent of Man originally proposed the idea that musicality might have evolved as a sexually selected trait. This proposition, coupled with the portrayal of popular musicians as sex symbols and the prevalence of love-themed lyrics in music, suggests a possible link between music and attraction. However, recent scientific exploration of the evolutionary functions of music has predominantly focused on theories of social bonding and group signaling, with limited research addressing the sexual selection hypothesis. We identify two distinct types of music-making for these different functions: music for attraction, which would be virtuosic in nature to display physical and cognitive fitness to potential mates; and music for connection, which would facilitate synchrony between partners and likely engage the same reward mechanisms seen in the general synchrony-bonding effect, enhancing perceived interpersonal intimacy as a facet of love. Linking these two musical functions to social psychological theories of relationship development and the components of love, we present a model that outlines the potential roles of music in romantic relationships, from initial attraction to ongoing relationship maintenance. In addition to synthesizing the existing literature, our model serves as a roadmap for empirical research aimed at rigorously investigating the possible functions of music for romantic relationships.

An observation of a negative effect of social cohesion on creativity in musical improvisation

Although various social factors can significantly impact creative performance, it is still unclear how social cohesion (i.e., how close we feel to others) influences creativity. We therefore conducted two studies exploring the association between social cohesion and creativity within the domain of musical improvisation, a prime example of creative performance, which usually plays out in social contexts. The first study (n = 58 musical novices) showed that music-induced synchrony facilitates social cohesion. In our second study (n = 18 musical novices), we found that in two out of three experimental conditions, increased social cohesion is associated with less creative musical outcomes, as rated by nine expert musicians. In our subsequent analysis we related measures of social cohesion and creativity. This approach highlights how, within a musical setting, creativity unfolds in the context of social contingencies as social cohesion and related factors.

Musical anhedonia, timbre, and the rewards of music listening

Pleasure in music has been linked to predictive coding of melodic and rhythmic patterns, subserved by connectivity between regions in the brain's auditory and reward networks. Specific musical anhedonics derive little pleasure from music and have altered auditory-reward connectivity, but no difficulties with music perception abilities and no generalized physical anhedonia. Recent research suggests that specific musical anhedonics experience pleasure in nonmusical sounds, suggesting that the implicated brain pathways may be specific to music reward. However, this work used sounds with clear real-world sources (e.g., babies laughing, crowds cheering), so positive hedonic responses could be based on the referents of these sounds rather than the sounds themselves. We presented specific musical anhedonics and matched controls with isolated short pleasing and displeasing synthesized sounds of varying timbres with no clear real-world referents. While the two groups found displeasing sounds equally displeasing, the musical anhedonics gave substantially lower pleasure ratings to the pleasing sounds, indicating that their sonic anhedonia is not limited to musical rhythms and melodies. Furthermore, across a large sample of participants, mean pleasure ratings for pleasing synthesized sounds predicted significant and similar variance in six dimensions of musical reward considered to be relatively independent, suggesting that pleasure in sonic timbres play a role in eliciting reward-related responses to music. We replicate the earlier findings of preserved pleasure ratings for semantically referential sounds in musical anhedonics and find that pleasure ratings of semantic referents, when presented without sounds, correlated with ratings for the sounds themselves. This association was stronger in musical anhedonics than in controls, suggesting the use of semantic knowledge as a compensatory mechanism for affective sound processing. Our results indicate that specific musical anhedonia is not entirely specific to melodic and rhythmic processing, and suggest that timbre merits further research as a source of pleasure in music.

Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures

Emotions, bodily sensations and movement are integral parts of musical experiences. Yet, it remains unknown i) whether emotional connotations and structural features of music elicit discrete bodily sensations and ii) whether these sensations are culturally consistent. We addressed these questions in a cross-cultural study with Western (European and North American, n = 903) and East Asian (Chinese, n = 1035). We precented participants with silhouettes of human bodies and asked them to indicate the bodily regions whose activity they felt changing while listening to Western and Asian musical pieces with varying emotional and acoustic qualities. The resulting bodily sensation maps (BSMs) varied as a function of the emotional qualities of the songs, particularly in the limb, chest, and head regions. Music-induced emotions and corresponding BSMs were replicable across Western and East Asian subjects. The BSMs clustered similarly across cultures, and cluster structures were similar for BSMs and self-reports of emotional experience. The acoustic and structural features of music were consistently associated with the emotion ratings and music-induced bodily sensations across cultures. These results highlight the importance of subjective bodily experience in music-induced emotions and demonstrate consistent associations between musical features, music-induced emotions, and bodily sensations across distant cultures.

Music as aposematic signal: predator defense strategies in early human evolution

The article draws attention to a neglected key element of human evolutionary history-the defense strategies of hominins and early humans against predators. Possible reasons for this neglect are discussed, and the historical development of this field is outlined. Many human morphological and behavioral characteristics-musicality, sense of rhythm, use of dissonances, entrainment, bipedalism, long head hair, long legs, strong body odor, armpit hair, traditions of body painting and cannibalism-are explained as predator avoidance tactics of an aposematic (warning display) defense strategy. The article argues that the origins of human musical faculties should be studied in the wider context of an early, multimodal human defense strategy from predators.

Biological principles for music and mental health

Efforts to integrate music into healthcare systems and wellness practices are accelerating but the biological foundations supporting these initiatives remain underappreciated. As a result, music-based interventions are often sidelined in medicine. Here, I bring together advances in music research from neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to bridge music's specific foundations in human biology with its specific therapeutic applications. The framework I propose organizes the neurophysiological effects of music around four core elements of human musicality: tonality, rhythm, reward, and sociality. For each, I review key concepts, biological bases, and evidence of clinical benefits. Within this framework, I outline a strategy to increase music's impact on health based on standardizing treatments and their alignment with individual differences in responsivity to these musical elements. I propose that an integrated biological understanding of human musicality-describing each element's functional origins, development, phylogeny, and neural bases-is critical to advancing rational applications of music in mental health and wellness.

Thematic Contents of Mental Imagery are Shaped by Concurrent Task-Irrelevant Music

Imagination plays a key role in evidence-based, cognitive therapies, and recent research highlights that music - a perceptual stimulus imbued with affective and social meaning - can influence some aspects of imagination, such as vividness and emotional tone. However, little is known about music's capability to facilitate specific imagery themes that may be relevant for therapy. Here, we examine whether the quantity and quality (related to themes of affect, social dynamics, and confidence) of people's imagery is affected by the presence of task-irrelevant background music. One hundred participants imagined the continuation of a figure's journey while listening to different musical excerpts or silence. Written reports of imagined journeys underwent linguistic analysis to reveal the number of words belonging to the themes of interest. Bayesian Mixed Effects models revealed that music (vs. silence) led to longer reports and predicted imagery characterised by affect, social dynamics, and confidence. Implications for therapy are discussed.

Sing to me, baby: Infants show neural tracking and rhythmic movements to live and dynamic maternal singing

Infant-directed singing has unique acoustic characteristics that may allow even very young infants to respond to the rhythms carried through the caregiver's voice. The goal of this study was to examine neural and movement responses to live and dynamic maternal singing in 7-month-old infants and their relation to linguistic development. In total, 60 mother-infant dyads were observed during two singing conditions (playsong and lullaby). In Study 1 (n = 30), we measured infant EEG and used an encoding approach utilizing ridge regressions to measure neural tracking. In Study 2 (n =40), we coded infant rhythmic movements. In both studies, we assessed children's vocabulary when they were 20 months old. In Study 1, we found above-threshold neural tracking of maternal singing, with superior tracking of lullabies than playsongs. We also found that the acoustic features of infant-directed singing modulated tracking. In Study 2, infants showed more rhythmic movement to playsongs than lullabies. Importantly, neural coordination (Study 1) and rhythmic movement (Study 2) to playsongs were positively related to infants' expressive vocabulary at 20 months. These results highlight the importance of infants' brain and movement coordination to their caregiver's musical presentations, potentially as a function of musical variability.

Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audio

Music is a fundamental element in every culture, serving as a universal means of expressing our emotions, feelings, and beliefs. This work investigates the link between our moral values and musical choices through lyrics and audio analyses. We align the psychometric scores of 1,480 participants to acoustics and lyrics features obtained from the top 5 songs of their preferred music artists from Facebook Page Likes. We employ a variety of lyric text processing techniques, including lexicon-based approaches and BERT-based embeddings, to identify each song's narrative, moral valence, attitude, and emotions. In addition, we extract both low- and high-level audio features to comprehend the encoded information in participants' musical choices and improve the moral inferences. We propose a Machine Learning approach and assess the predictive power of lyrical and acoustic features separately and in a multimodal framework for predicting moral values. Results indicate that lyrics and audio features from the artists people like inform us about their morality. Though the most predictive features vary per moral value, the models that utilised a combination of lyrics and audio characteristics were the most successful in predicting moral values, outperforming the models that only used basic features such as user demographics, the popularity of the artists, and the number of likes per user. Audio features boosted the accuracy in the prediction of empathy and equality compared to textual features, while the opposite happened for hierarchy and tradition, where higher prediction scores were driven by lyrical features. This demonstrates the importance of both lyrics and audio features in capturing moral values. The insights gained from our study have a broad range of potential uses, including customising the music experience to meet individual needs, music rehabilitation, or even effective communication campaign crafting.

Emotions and courtship help bonded pairs cooperate, but emotional agents are vulnerable to deceit

Coordinated pair bonds are common in birds and also occur in many other taxa. How do animals solve the social dilemmas they face in coordinating with a partner? We developed an evolutionary model to explore this question, based on observations that a) neuroendocrine feedback provides emotional bookkeeping which is thought to play a key role in vertebrate social bonds and b) these bonds are developed and maintained via courtship interactions that include low-stakes social dilemmas. Using agent-based simulation, we found that emotional bookkeeping and courtship sustained cooperation in the iterated prisoner's dilemma in noisy environments, especially when combined. However, when deceitful defection was possible at low cost, courtship often increased cooperation, whereas emotional bookkeeping decreased it.

The origins and function of musical performance

Music is widely recognised as a human universal, yet there is no agreed explanation for its function, or why and when it evolved. I summarise experimental evidence that the primary function of musicking lies in social bonding, both at the dyadic and community levels, via the effect that performing any form of music has on the brain's endorphin system (the principal neurohormonal basis for social bonding in primates). The many other functions associated with music-making (mate choice, pleasure, coalition signalling, etc) are all better understood as derivative of this, either as secondary selection pressures or as windows of evolutionary opportunity (exaptations). If music's function is primarily as an adjunct of the social bonding mechanism (a feature it shares with laughter, feasting, storytelling and the rituals of religion), then reverse engineering the problem suggests that the capacity for music-making most likely evolved with the appearance of archaic humans. This agrees well with anatomical evidence for the capacity to sing.

The shared genetic architecture and evolution of human language and musical rhythm

Rhythm and language-related traits are phenotypically correlated, but their genetic overlap is largely unknown. Here, we leveraged two large-scale genome-wide association studies performed to shed light on the shared genetics of rhythm (N=606,825) and dyslexia (N=1,138,870). Our results reveal an intricate shared genetic and neurobiological architecture, and lay groundwork for resolving longstanding debates about the potential co-evolution of human language and musical traits.