Why Do We ALL Love Music?
While the human brain is hardwired to feel pleasure for basic survival necessities, such as eating and sex, music — although obviously pleasurable —doesn’t offer the same evolutionary advantages. So why do we respond to patterns of sounds that disappear in an instant? Why do we belt music from the top of our lungs, learn to play instruments, and empty our back accounts to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway?
Which brings us to the question that forms the title of this article: why do we love music? On its face, there is no apparent reason why a sequence or pattern of sounds that has no specific propositional meaning should elicit any kind of pleasurable response. Yet music is widely considered amongst our greatest joys. Where does this phenomenon come from? Researchers have found that dopamine release is strongest when a piece of music reaches an emotional peak and the listener feels "chills" — the spine- tingling sensation of excitement and awe.
Human beings seem to have innate musicality. That is, the capacity to understand and derive pleasure from complex musical patterns appears to be culturally universal. Musicality is expressed very early in development. In this sense, music may be compared to speech — the other cognitively interesting way that we use sound. But whereas speech is most obviously important for communicating propositions or concepts, obtaining such knowledge, this is not the primary function of music. Rather, it is music’s power to communicate emotions, moods, or affective mental states that seems beneficial to our quality of life.
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