Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity

Listening to music often evokes intense emotions [ 1 Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Recent research suggests that musical pleasure comes from positive reward prediction errors, which arise when what is heard proves to be better than expected [ 3 Predictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding. Central to this view is the engagement of the nucleus accumbens--a brain region that processes reward expectations--to pleasurable music and surprising musical events [ 4 Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music reward value. However, expectancy violations along multiple musical dimensions (e.g., harmony and melody) have failed to implicate the nucleus accumbens [ 9 Adults and children processing music: an fMRI study. Whether changes in musical expectancy elicit pleasure has thus remained elusive [ 11 Musical pleasure and musical emotions.