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The idea that musical training improves speech perception in challenging listening environments is appealing and of clinical importance, yet the mechanisms of any such musician advantage are not well specified. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that musicians outperformed nonmusicians in identifying syllables at varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), which was associated with stronger activation of the left inferior frontal and right auditory regions in musicians compared with nonmusicians. Moreover, musicians showed greater specificity of phoneme representations in bilateral auditory and speech motor regions (e.g., premotor cortex) at higher SNRs and in the left speech motor regions at lower SNRs, as determined by multivoxel pattern analysis. Musical training also enhanced the intrahemispheric and interhemispheric functional connectivity between auditory and speech motor regions. Our findings suggest that improved speech in noise perception in musicians relies on stronger recruitment of, finer phonological representations in, and stronger functional connectivity between auditory and frontal speech motor cortices in both hemispheres, regions involved in bottom-up spectrotemporal analyses and top-down articulatory prediction and sensorimotor integration, respectively.

Speech and music are remarkable aspects of human cognition and sensory-motor processing. Cognitive neuroscience has focused on them to understand how brain function and structure are modified by learning. Recent evidence indicates that individual differences in anatomical and functional properties of the neural architecture also affect learning and performance in these domains. Here, neuroimaging findings are reviewed that reiterate evidence of experience-dependent brain plasticity, but also point to the predictive validity of such data in relation to new learning in speech and music domains. Indices of neural sensitivity to certain stimulus features have been shown to predict individual rates of learning; individual network properties of brain activity are especially relevant in this regard, as they may reflect anatomical connectivity. Similarly, numerous studies have shown that anatomical features of auditory cortex and other structures, and their anatomical connectivity, are predictive of new sensory-motor learning ability. Implications of this growing body of literature are discussed.

This review discusses human neuroimaging as well as cellular studies to describe how learning sculpts the brain. Human brain imaging has identified structural changes in gray and white matter that occur with learning. However, ascribing imaging measures to underlying cellular and molecular events is challenging. Here we review human neuroimaging findings of structural plasticity and then discuss cellular and molecular level changes that could underlie observed imaging effects. Greater dialog between researchers in these different fields would help to facilitate cross-talk between cellular and systems level explanations of how learning sculpts brain structure.

Music has existed in human societies since prehistory, perhaps because it allows expression and regulation of emotion and evokes pleasure. In this review, we present findings from cognitive neuroscience that bear on the question of how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. First, we identify some of the auditory cortical circuits that are responsible for encoding and storing tonal patterns and discuss evidence that cortical loops between auditory and frontal cortices are important for maintaining musical information in working memory and for the recognition of structural regularities in musical patterns, which then lead to expectancies. Second, we review evidence concerning the mesolimbic striatal system and its involvement in reward, motivation, and pleasure in other domains. Recent data indicate that this dopaminergic system mediates pleasure associated with music; specifically, reward value for music can be coded by activity levels in the nucleus accumbens, whose functional connectivity with auditory and frontal areas increases as a function of increasing musical reward. We propose that pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops that enable predictions and expectancies to emerge from sound patterns and subcortical systems responsible for reward and valuation.

Listening to music is amongst the most rewarding experiences for humans. Music has no functional resemblance to other rewarding stimuli, and has no demonstrated biological value, yet individuals continue listening to music for pleasure. It has been suggested that the pleasurable aspects of music listening are related to a change in emotional arousal, although this link has not been directly investigated. In this study, using methods of high temporal sensitivity we investigated whether there is a systematic relationship between dynamic increases in pleasure states and physiological indicators of emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity, body temperature, and blood volume pulse. Twenty-six participants listened to self-selected intensely pleasurable music and \"neutral\" music that was individually selected for them based on low pleasure ratings they provided on other participants' music. The \"chills\" phenomenon was used to index intensely pleasurable responses to music. During music listening, continuous real-time recordings of subjective pleasure states and simultaneous recordings of sympathetic nervous system activity, an objective measure of emotional arousal, were obtained. Results revealed a strong positive correlation between ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal. Importantly, a dissociation was revealed as individuals who did not experience pleasure also showed no significant increases in emotional arousal. These results have broader implications by demonstrating that strongly felt emotions could be rewarding in themselves in the absence of a physically tangible reward or a specific functional goal.

Understanding how the brain translates a structured sequence of sounds, such as music, into a pleasant and rewarding experience is a fascinating question which may be crucial to better understand the processing of abstract rewards in humans. Previous neuroimaging findings point to a challenging role of the dopaminergic system in music-evoked pleasure. However, there is a lack of direct evidence showing that dopamine function is causally related to the pleasure we experience from music. We addressed this problem through a double blind within-subject pharmacological design in which we directly manipulated dopaminergic synaptic availability while healthy participants (n = 27) were engaged in music listening. We orally administrated to each participant a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo (lactose) in three different sessions. We demonstrate that levodopa and risperidone led to opposite effects in measures of musical pleasure and motivation: while the dopamine precursor levodopa, compared with placebo, increased the hedonic experience and music-related motivational responses, risperidone led to a reduction of both. This study shows a causal role of dopamine in musical pleasure and indicates that dopaminergic transmission might play different or additive roles than the ones postulated in affective processing so far, particularly in abstract cognitive activities.

Music can evoke pleasurable and rewarding experiences. Past studies that examined task-related brain activity revealed individual differences in musical reward sensitivity traits and linked them to interactions between the auditory and reward systems. However, state-dependent fluctuations in spontaneous neural activity in relation to music-driven rewarding experiences have not been studied. Here, we used functional MRI to examine whether the coupling of auditory-reward networks during a silent period immediately before music listening can predict the degree of musical rewarding experience of human participants ( N = 49). We used machine learning models and showed that the functional connectivity between auditory and reward networks, but not others, could robustly predict subjective, physiological, and neurobiological aspects of the strong musical reward of chills. Specifically, the right auditory cortex-striatum/orbitofrontal connections predicted the reported duration of chills and the activation level of nucleus accumbens and insula, whereas the auditory-amygdala connection was associated with psychophysiological arousal. Furthermore, the predictive model derived from the first sample of individuals was generalized in an independent dataset using different music samples. The generalization was successful only for state-like, pre-listening functional connectivity but not for stable, intrinsic functional connectivity. The current study reveals the critical role of sensory-reward connectivity in pre-task brain state in modulating subsequent rewarding experience.

Combining positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, the authors investigate the effects of emotionally arousing music on the dopamine system. They find that the anticipation of this abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway that is distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself. Music, an abstract stimulus, can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. Using the neurochemical specificity of [ 11 C]raclopride positron emission tomography scanning, combined with psychophysiological measures of autonomic nervous system activity, we found endogenous dopamine release in the striatum at peak emotional arousal during music listening. To examine the time course of dopamine release, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging with the same stimuli and listeners, and found a functional dissociation: the caudate was more involved during the anticipation and the nucleus accumbens was more involved during the experience of peak emotional responses to music. These results indicate that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system. Notably, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself. Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies.

Enjoying music reliably ranks among life’s greatest pleasures. Like many hedonic experiences, it engages several reward-related brain areas, with activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) most consistently reflecting the listener’s subjective response. Converging evidence suggests that this activity arises from musical “reward prediction errors” (RPEs) that signal the difference between expected and perceived musical events, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested. In the present fMRI experiment, we assessed whether music could elicit formally modeled RPEs in the NAc by applying a well-established decision-making protocol designed and validated for studying RPEs. In the scanner, participants chose between arbitrary cues that probabilistically led to dissonant or consonant music, and learned to make choices associated with the consonance, which they preferred. We modeled regressors of trial-by-trial RPEs, finding that NAc activity tracked musically elicited RPEs, to an extent that explained variance in the individual learning rates. These results demonstrate that music can act as a reward, driving learning and eliciting RPEs in the NAc, a hub of reward- and music enjoyment-related activity.

The auditory frequency-following response (FFR) is a non-invasive index of the fidelity of sound encoding in the brain, and is used to study the integrity, plasticity, and behavioral relevance of the neural encoding of sound. In this Perspective, we review recent evidence suggesting that, in humans, the FFR arises from multiple cortical and subcortical sources, not just subcortically as previously believed, and we illustrate how the FFR to complex sounds can enhance the wider field of auditory neuroscience. Far from being of use only to study basic auditory processes, the FFR is an uncommonly multifaceted response yielding a wealth of information, with much yet to be tapped. The auditory frequency-following response (FFR) indexes the quality of neural sound encoding in the brain. In this Perspective, the authors discuss the potential of the FFR to provide a better understanding of sound encoding in the auditory system and its relationship to behavior.