====== Musical appreciation ======

Music psychologists are trying to understand the processes that support musical behaviours - including perception, comprehension, memory, attention, emotional effects, and performance.

>Music is more mysterious than language because its //raison d’être// remains unsettled. Music has no obvious utility. Music is also difficult to define. Everyone knows what music is but cannot delimit its boundaries.\\ \\ Source : [[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027705002209?via%3Dihub|Cognition]] Volume 100, Issue 1, Pages 1-32\\

Many decades of extensive research has investigated :

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_emotion|The emotional effects]]   [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuroscience_of_music|Cognitive neuroscience ]]   [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics|Psychoacoustics]]   [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_musicology|Evolutionary musicology]]   [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociomusicology|Sociomusicology]] (all links via //Wikipedia//)

A very substantial body of experimental and observational work documents the //effects// that music has, and the //way// it's perceived - it's now known that many different brain-areas, working in conjunction (on both brain hemispheres) are involved in the perception of pitch, rhythm, harmony, tone etc. etc. (example [[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780444626301000111?via%3Dihub|ref]])

But there is no generally accepted theory that explains //why// music can instigate the profound psychological effects that it does.

Even the most basic effects, such as the general perception that minor chords tend to sound 'sad' whilst major chords don't, has no explanation.

Further reading (example music journals)

//[[http://mp.ucpress.edu/|Music Perception]] //   //[[https://journals.sagepub.com/home/msx|Musicae Scientiae]]//  //[[http://journals.sagepub.com/home/pom|Psychology of Music]]//

//Notes://

[1] Many animal species have been shown to respond to human-produced music - notably parrots, sea-lions, elephants, chimpanzees, [[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo7019|rats]] and [[https://www.science.org/content/article/we-got-beat-lemurs-show-vocal-musical-rhythm-rarity-animal-kingdom|lemurs]]

[2] A 2024 fMRI study found that live performances can emotionally affect listeners more than recordings. The reasons are not yet clear,

>Live and dynamic music (thus) seems to stimulate both the amygdala and the broader brain network for music emotion processing better than recorded music.\\ \\ Source : [[https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2316306121|PNAS 121 (10) e2316306121]]{{:oa_padlock_grn.png?16}}

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Also see   [[content:psychology:general:chills|Chills]],  [[content:psychology:general:musical_pitch|Musical pitch perception]], and [[content:psychology:general:rhythm_perception|Rhythm sensing]]

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