Attending your first concert is for sure a very memorable event for anyone. Think back to your first concert and remember all the lights, the noises, the feeling of standing behind a person too tall, you can barely see the stage, and of course, the music being performed. The reactions you had to every song were different, I’m sure, especially if you liked the song or if it wasn’t your favorite on the setlist. Attending my first concert led to the curiosity of how music makes the brain turn based on if you like what you are hearing or not. Experiencing the live music of a band I like really put into perspective how people react to music differently. While some people were having the time of their lives, screaming lyrics, others just stood there bobbing their heads. In this study, scientists wanted to investigate how listening to music participants deemed they liked or disliked and labeled as happy or sad, involved different areas of the brain.
Music can convey basic emotions like happiness or sadness and these emotions are typically associated with the role of the medial frontal cortices, amygdala, and striatum (Brattico et al. 2015). Wanting to further prove this, 29 participants aged 18-27 were asked to bring 4 liked happy songs, 4 liked sad songs, 4 disliked happy songs, 4 disliked sad songs. They were also asked if they had any form of musical background. 18 second music excerpts selected were played for the participants as they took fMRI scans to scan for brain associations with the music played. The results showed that among the songs labeled “sad” or “happy”, activation in the superior temporal gyrus, transverse temporal gyrus, lingual gyrus, and other gyri, were significant. In relation to “liking” or “disliking”, activations were shown in the anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, superior temporal gyrus, amygdala, thalamic anterior nucleus, and cingulate gyrus among others.
Figure 1. This shows areas of the brain activated when participants listened to music they “liked” vs. “disliked”. This shows the amygdala being activated when listening to disliked music and areas of the mesolimbic system like the caudate, being activated when listening to “liked” songs.
The amygdala is a structure that is heavily involved with emotions (Guy-Evans, 2017). The right amygdala was activated when listening to disliked music. The activation of this area can be the reason you feel strong emotions when listening to songs you’re not very fond of. This could be due to the amygdala’s bidirectional connection with the hippocampus which links emotions to memories (Guy-Evans, 2023). The amygdala stores memories that have a strong emotional meaning to them (Guy-Evans, 2023) so listening to a song that brings back bad memories could make you feel negative emotions, like fear. The opposite can happen with the reward system which the study showed became activated when listening to liked music. When someone, like at a concert, hears a song they like, they feel “good emotions” like happiness or excitement. The reward system can become activated when listening to pleasurable music (Brattico et al, 2015). Activation of the reward system can be related to the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine as preferred music induces dopamine release in regions like the caudate (part of reward system; VN Salimpoor et. al, 2011, cited in Ferrari et. al, 2019). The release of dopamine could be the reason why we feel happiness and pleasure when listening to our favorite songs.
Figure 2. A picture I took at a concert this past year in 2024.
While I was at my first concert, I became extremely excited and happy when they started playing my favorite song. Making the connection, hearing a song I like, induced my reward system to release dopamine, which led me to feel happy while listening to the song play. Thankfully, there were no bad memories associated with any song that played that could’ve provoked any negative emotions, but if that were to happen, it would’ve been in relation to my amygdala which stores memories associated with strong emotions.
Works Cited
Brattico E, Bogert B, Alluri V, Tervaniemi M, Eerola T and Jacobsen T (2016) It’s Sad but I Like It: The Neural Dissociation Between Musical Emotions and Liking in Experts and Laypersons. Oshin Vartanian, editor. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 9:676. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00676
Guy-Evans, Olivia. What Is The Amygdala: Function & Brain Location. Simply Psychology [internet]. [updated 14 December 2023; cited 2025 February 23], Available from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/amygdala.html.
L. Ferreri, E. Mas-Herrero, R.J. Zatorre, P. Ripollés, A. Gomez-Andres, H. Alicart, G. Olivé, J. Marco-Pallarés, R.M. Antonijoan, M. Valle, J. Riba, & A. Rodriguez-Fornells, Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116 (9): 3793-3798, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811878116 (2019).