The Experience of Music Perception: A Review of Physiological, Neural, and Psychological Responses

Abstract

Music allows artists to express and connect themselves with broad and diverse audiences. Certain musical choices can greatly impact the amount of influence the artists’ message has on an audience. To best share messages through a musical work, it can be beneficial for an artist to understand the biological processes with which the audience may experience the perception of music. The physiological, psychological, and neural responses represent the bodily effects of music and are thus informative to study in relation to the individual experience of a musical work on an individual. This paper will review the biological view of music and create a narrative to show how physiology, psychology, and neurology can be applied to influence a social or individual atmosphere toward an artist's desired message. After synthesizing the biological effects of musical feature changes (such as tempo, rhythm, volume, pleasantness, structure, music type, emotions, and audience type) this paper will make three conclusions relating to the intersection of physiology, neurology, and psychology. First, the ability to prefer or expect a musical change or feature can have a large emotional impact. Second, the arguably most important musical emotion of empathy can likely be created through rhythmic features of tempo and synchronization. Third, peak musical experiences are emotionally arousing and largely influenced by musical structure and audience setting.