Lectures and seminars Brain & Culture lecture: Music, Beauty, and the Brain – From Sound Parameters to Cultural Influence

Abstract

Humans are naturally drawn to beauty in their surroundings, including in the auditory domain. For centuries, composers have aimed to create music that is perceived as beautiful—although avant-garde movements have sometimes deviated from this goal. Nonetheless, the concept of beauty remains central for both laypersons and musicians, as confirmed by our survey study. Despite its importance, cognitive neuroscience has largely overlooked the neural foundations of musical beauty. In this talk, I will discuss a series of studies aimed at addressing this gap, exploring musical beauty in the brain across various Western music styles and even extending the investigation to distant musical cultures.

Using continuous behavioral ratings collected with a motion sensor, along with expert evaluations, we identified and musicologically analyzed beautiful and non-beautiful passages from entire pieces representing different Western musical styles. We then measured brain responses to these passages using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

In our first study, regional analysis of fMRI responses revealed that beautiful passages activated the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a region associated with reward and aesthetic judgment. In contrast, less beautiful passages engaged bilateral supratemporal regions involved in sensory processing. Effective connectivity analysis further showed that beautiful music suppressed auditory cortex activation while enhancing communication with the OFC, suggesting a distinct neural pathway for aesthetic appreciation.

In a follow-up study focusing on dynamic, time-varying connectivity, we found that individual brain network configurations influenced the perception of beauty. The OFC again played a central role, with frequent switching among reward-related regions during music listening. In contrast, listening to non-beautiful music primarily involved sensory-motor areas, indicating the brain’s effort to process and interpret complex or less aesthetically pleasing sounds.

After these studies on Western music, we extended our research to examine the brain’s response to non-Western musical experiences—specifically, the emotional and aesthetic reactions to traditional Chinese music. Preliminary results obtained with electroencephalography (EEG) suggest that cultural background significantly shapes how listeners perceive and process musical beauty and emotion at the neural level.

Elvira Brattico is professor of Neuroscience, Music and Aesthetics at Aarhus University in Denmark and of General Psychology at the University of Bari in Italy. She is co-founder and principal investigator of the “Center for Music in the Brain,” a Danish center of excellent specialized in the neuroscience of music (2015-2025) and previously she co-founded the Finnish Center for Interdisciplinary Music Research (2008-2013). During the past twenty years, she has conducted empirical studies on music perception, learning, and appreciation across the lifespan, documented in over 200 peer-reviewed papers. She edited four volumes for Springer, Routledge, and Frontiers Media and is involved in editorial work for international scientific journals. Furthermore, she serves as a reviewer and panelist for European and Asian funding agencies. Currently, she is a board member of scientific societies such International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (IAEA) and Neuromusic. Her present research includes longitudinal projects on music learning in childhood and adolescence, and clinical trials on music- and art-based interventions for both developmental and ageing populations.