What is Music Psychology? How Does Music Impact Behaviour? A Cognitive Psychology Podcast Episode.

Episode 400 of The Psychology World Podcast is finally here. I couldn't have done it without you wonderful listeners and readers, and I'm immensely grateful to all of you. I'm really proud that we've made it to this moment. Granted, I have to admit that coming up with the idea for episode 400 was really tough because I didn't want to do another lessons learnt episode from 400 episodes and I didn't want to comment on my psychology journey as I've done that already throughout the past one hundred episodes. Therefore, I decided to focus on a guilty pleasure and a psychology topic that would make me really happy, and I wouldn't think about viewer numbers. As a result in this cognitive psychology podcast, you'll learn about the psychology of music. Including how music impacts our thoughts, feelings and behaviour and so much more. If you've ever wondered about the psychological processes behind our enjoyment of music, then this will be a great episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

What is Music Psychology?

Originally, I first heard of music psychology back in 2018 when I was looking for universities to apply to because at the University of Kent, there was a psychology of music module available for you to take in your final year. By the time I got to my final year, the module was no longer available and I likely wouldn't have taken it anyway. Yet I remember at the time, thinking how fascinating it was that we could study music and understand how it impacts our behaviour. 

As a result, music psychology is the empirical study of how music impacts human behaviour, cognition as well as our emotions. Music psychology isn't only about understanding why we like music and our music tastes, but it's about understanding everything that goes into the musical experience too. For example, how the auditory system transforms sound into something we can psychologically experience, how this leads to an emotional response and how music can transport us across time to different memories and places. 

For myself and everyone else, there are some songs that will always transport us to the past or they represent a certain moment in our past. For instance, the song "I Will Survive" will always remind me of my teenage years and how I just needed to survive no matter what. Equally, the song reminds me of a certain karaoke situation on an international camping trip. 

Another example is the Abba song "The Winner Takes it All," reminds me of my mental breakdown in 2023 because of some lyrics and the emotions it evokes in me. 

Music psychology helps us to understand why these happen in the first place. And personally, I am very happy that music psychology doesn't primarily focus on why we like music because I don't think it's possible to explain my "varied" music tastes. For instance, as part of my handful of signs of ADHD (because I don't meet the criteria for a diagnosis) I hate silence and when I'm working I always have to have some background noise. The songs I listen to include a lot of Japanese songs from the intros of animes, a lot of instrumentals and epic-themed songs, even more English covers of these intros from animes but I also like Abba and other English songs. Teddy Swims is also good. 

I would like to see an explanation of why I like such a range of songs, but largely the reason why I love the songs from the boys' love anime Given is because of the emotional lyrics. 

Anyway, the field of music psychology is a lot older than people think because it can actually be traced back to Ancient Greece. Ancient Greek philosophers wrote about how music impacts a person's moral reasoning as well as character. If we jump forward to 1863, then Hermann von Helmholtz published his landmark academic work on the acoustics of music perception. Then by the middle of the 20th century, cognitive psychologists started to study how people encoded and retrieved songs. 

Nowadays, music psychology expands across a wide range of psychological and other disciplines. For example, developmental psychology, neuroscience, clinical psychology and anthropology. 

Personally, another reason why I'm really interested in music psychology is because when I was at university, I worked a lot with a PhD student who looked at music as a treatment for depression, or ways to incorporate music into psychological treatment. I've read some of his research and the wider literature and it was promising from time to time. 

This leads me to my next point because as an aspiring clinical psychologist, and as someone who firmly believes that research should always have real-world implications that improve lives, we need to understand why music psychology matters. Music psychology is a great discipline because music is at the heart of, or it intersects with, a lot of psychological processes and things that make us human. For example, music impacts our memory, our mood, our social connection, mental health and social identity. 

This means that music psychology isn't only about explaining why a certain song causes us to cry but another one doesn't, it helps us to explain how the brain constructs emotions, how our culture shapes perception and what makes us social creatures. 

Music helps us to explain a lot.

How Does Music Affect Our Emotions?

All of us have certain songs that we flat out love and make us feel really good. For example, when I'm feeling a little low or my mental health isn't the best, something that I remember doing during the worst of my rape trauma is listening to the Nezuko theme song from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. It's a lovely song and tune, and it just helped to improve my mood. This is something that is unique to all of us, because you will have songs that impact you in a profound way but they won't do anything for me, and vice versa. Let's explore why music impacts our emotions.

As a result, unlike our behaviours and psychological concepts, when we listen to music, our entire cortex lights up and becomes activated because music requires a lot of neurological processes as well as systems. For example, our limbic system processes the emotional significance of the music whereas our auditory cortex processes the raw acoustics of the music. From the timbre, the pitch and the rhythm, our auditory cortex handles a lot. Also, our nucleus accumbens releases dopamine in response to the music because it is the brain's reward hub, as well as our cerebellum governs the timing and movement. A final brain region involved in music is the prefrontal cortex because it tracks our expectations and the structure of the music.

As you can see, whenever we listen to music, there is a lot going on in our brains. 

I have to admit that writing a podcast episode on the psychology of music is a little distracting because I always listen to certain types of music depending on whether I'm working on fiction or nonfiction, and because I'm focusing on music, I'm not really allowing my music to drown into the background like normal. For those of you that are curious, at the moment, my YouTube watch later list has just started 30 minutes of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate menu music. I would never listen to it for pleasure but it's a nice background noise for writing nonfiction.

Anyway, we know that our brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine when we listen to music and this makes us feel good and makes listening to music feel rewarding. Much the same as sex, food and addictive drugs because they all use the same neurochemical system in the brain. Yet research shows that our brain releases dopamine twice when we're listening to music. The first time is in the anticipation of the climax and the second time is when the climax actually arrives. This is important for us to be aware of because it shows us that the brain doesn't just passively take in music and think "well that's nice,". Instead our brains are learning, predicting and rewarding itself for being right, and this helps us to understand the neurochemical basis of musical emotional responses and why music feels like more than simple entertainment.

Personally, if I really think about it then I can see this in different ways in my own musical tastes. Especially in English covers of anime introduction songs or instrumentals, there tends to be certain parts (or the climax) that I flat out love and I look forward to hearing them in particular. This could be self-reported evidence of how this works in real life because my brain releases dopamine because I am looking forward and I am happy because of the anticipation of the climax, and then I continue to feel good when the climax actually arrives. Just an observation. 

Are there any songs that you love to listen to because of the climax?

This is further supported by measurable physiological responses, because listening to music can help to reduce your body's stress hormone, cortisol, it can decrease subjective anxiety and heart rate. Although, your heart rate can increase through intense sections of a song or music. Interestingly, some research suggests that self-selected music can reduce cortisol levels more effectively than a standard anti-anxiety condition in a clinical stress test. 

Moreover, there are other psychological mechanisms that explain how music evokes emotion in us. For example, the learnt associations that tie music to personal events and memories, the reflexes of the brain stem that are triggered by sudden sounds, as well as the emotional contagion that people might experience so they unconsciously mirror the mood of a given performer. This helps us to understand why the emotional impacts of songs and music differ for different people. Even more, it is possible for a song to move two people for different reasons using entirely different neural routes.

Building upon this, if we look at why certain songs give us chills or goosebumps because about 55% to 86% of people report this experience when they listen to music, then the answer can be traced back to our physiological response to music. Since researchers understand that the reason why we experience chills when listening to certain songs is because we undergo an intense emotional response that's linked to the dopamine system. 

This is caused by unexpected harmonic shifts. For example, a sudden change in dynamics, like a voice entering alone without music in the background after a long instrumental passage in a song. This creates chills and goosebumps because in a way, this confuses our brain. Our brain is all about predicting what comes next in a musical sequence, because if we know what's going to happen then there's safety in it. Our need for certainty and stable predictions is something that we've evolved. Therefore, a sudden change in dynamics and an unexpected harmonic shift causes our brain to react in a surprising-but-fitting turn with a small autonomic jolt. It is this jolt that causes us to experience a shiver because we're feeling our prediction system being surprised in a positive way.

On the flip side, and this is something that I love about psychology, some people don't experience shivers or goosebumps when listening to music and this is important information, because it helps us to understand this process better. Sometimes this lack of shivers is caused by a condition called musical anhedonia and this is where a person essentially feels nothing when they listen to music despite having normal hearing and no other emotional deficits. Other times, it can be caused by personality factors because people who score higher on the personality trait of openness to experience and/ or empathy tend to report significantly more chills than people lower in these traits. 

Personally, this is an aspect of psychology that I do enjoy. I would never research it but I do enjoy looking at research from time to time into people who don't experience certain things that a lot of other people take for granted. Since if we can understand what's lacking or the differences in people who don't experience certain things then it helps us to better understand the process and mechanisms behind the concept or phenomenon in other people who do have it. For instance, understanding sight in people with colourblindness helps us to understand how colour perception works in people who can see colour. It is that expansion of knowledge that I love. Typically, this is also where you can find clinical implications. 

How Does High-Energy Music and Electronic Disco Music Impact the Brain?

Personally, if there's one genre or type of music that I don't like, it is electronic disco or High-Energy Music. It's one of the reasons why I don't enjoy clubs and for my personal taste, this music is way too energetic for me. If I wanted music to energise me and cause my heart rate to spike, I would go to the gym. Not listen to music. 

The reason why I'm putting this section here is because in the last section, I mentioned that different music can use different neurological routes and systems to cause you to have an experience. High-Energy Music is a good example of this difference. 

As a result of electronic disco music is a very clever genre that actively makes use of our brain systems and it basically hacks our psychological processes. Since electronic disco music operates through the arousal and motor systems in the brain, because the 4/4 kick drum at 128 to 140 beats per minute synchronises with our heart rate and then it slightly increases it. 

This means that we physically feel these bass frequencies and the build-and-drop structure of this genre is engineered to exploit our anticipatory dopamine spike and the extended build-ups followed by the drop delivers the intense dopamine release. In other words, electronic dance music uses music psychology to exploit our brain's reward system so it makes us feel good. 

How Does Music Trigger Autobiographical Memories?

If you listen to people for any length of time, they will typically mention how different songs and music remind them of different moments of their life. For example, a married couple might be sitting in a bar or pub and they hear a song that reminds them of their first date or their meet-cute. Some childhood friends might be listening to a song that reminds them of a funny moment. Or someone might be listening to music and remember the moment they first listened to it years before.

Some people can even experience such vivid memories because of music that they can remember the smells, textures and faces of other people around them. 

This is because our brains encode music in our memory along with the context that we first heard the song in and this involves different neural systems. For instance, we use the auditory cortex as the anchor, the amygdala for emotional tagging and the hippocampus for episodic memory. This results in a song or a piece of music being able to recall memories for us because the song becomes a retrieval cue for the contextual and emotional details stored in our memories. As well as according to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, music can hijack the autobiographical memory system because of this integration.

In terms of when this effect is most powerful, there's a reason why we tend to remember songs and music from our adolescence the best. This is when the effect is at its most powerful and it reflects the research finding of the "reminiscence bump". This is the finding that demonstrates people feel the strongest emotional connection to songs that they first heard between the ages of 12 and 25, and going back to the importance of music in identity, this aligns with the developmental period where identity formation is occurring. 

What Else Can Auditory Perception Teach Us About Broader Mental Processes?

To finish up our look at the cognitive psychology aspects of music psychology, the way how our brain perceives music can teach us some other facts about our mental processes as well, because our brain relies on other neurological systems too besides the auditory system. For example, by understanding how the brain predicts musical meter and the musical beat of a song, this helps us to better understand how the brain uses its predictive processing system in physical coordination, language as well as social interactions. Also, understanding and researching how our brain predicts music helps us to understand how the brain creates prediction models based on incoming sensory data and how it adjusts our motor system in real time. This is this prediction model that helps us to get in a "groove" so to speak and this demonstrates how our auditory perception links to our mental processes much deeper than simply hearing sounds. 

Additionally, because music engages the language centres of the brain as well as our memory networks, emotional systems and motor circuits at the same time, this feeds into the cultural importance of music. Something we'll build upon in a later section of the episode, because the simultaneous use of these brain systems demonstrates the deep integration of these systems and it could even suggest why we created music in the first place before it became something to find pleasure in.

I think this makes perfect sense because thousands of years ago, before we developed modern comforts, we were safe inside our homes and our communities and before we eliminated the main predators in our countries. Like wolves and bears in the United Kingdom. We were only focused on survival and how best to communicate the dangers, the strategies and the survival stories from our friends, family members and other important people in our tribe. Music. Music might have been a great answer because it engages our attention, our language centres and it makes us feel things so we can remember the information when we need it most.

It's just an idea and theory, but it is a good one.

How Can Music Be Used Clinically?

In addition, the use of music for memory purposes does have some interesting clinical implications because music-based interventions are frequently used in Alzheimer's treatment because even though, other forms of autobiographical memory aren't accessible, getting a person with the disease to listen to music from their youth can help to retrieve fragments of their identity that seemed lost. Due to the neural pathways that encode musical memory are typically preserved for longer than other memory systems.

Can Music Therapy Improve Your Mental Health?

Moving on to the more applied aspects of the psychology of music, this is what I am really interested in. Can music actually improve our mental health? 

There are three main reasons why I'm curious about exploring the clinical psychology implications of music. Firstly, I know from personal experience from my rape trauma that music can be very self-soothing and when I was struggling with my psychological distress, music helped me to self-regulate. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of my time at university in orbit of a PhD student who focused on the mental health implications of music. I always got the sense from him that the results were very mixed and whether or not music could improve a person's mental health depended on a lot of factors. The answer wasn't clear-cut. Thirdly, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I always want to learn more about mental health.

As a result, music therapy uses clinical research findings, trained practitioners and defined protocols to improve the mental health of individuals with conditions like depression, anxiety, trauma as well as neurodevelopmental disorders. The results of the research can be described as rather lacklustre or rather inspiring depending on the study looked at.

Personally, this reminds me of my research into the gamification of autism that I conducted during my placement year of my undergraduate degree. There were a lot of problems with the research and some of the results were impressive, others were laughable and all of it was concerning. 

Anyway, the impact of music therapy on people with Parkinson's disease is rather impressive and clear-cut because research shows that rhythmic auditory stimulation, a steady musical beat, can be used to entrain the motor system. This is useful because people with the condition struggle to initiate movement but when walking to a calibrated rhythm, they can often walk more smoothly and with a better stride length compared to without this beat. Due to the motor cortex synchronises with this external rhythmic cue, so in essence, the brain borrows the temporal structure of the beat to make up for the deficits in the basal ganglia's internal timing system. 

On the other hand, the research into music therapy's impact on anxiety and depression is a lot more variable, but people still argue that it's useful. Especially since meta-analyses show that adding music therapy to standard psychological therapy reduces depressive symptoms more than treatment alone. This is even stronger when the interventions involve active music-making instead of passive listening. Then for anxiety, stress-response data shows that controlled exposure to preferred music lowers cortisol levels as well as leads to reductions in subjective anxiety.

Personally, largely based on my own experience, this doesn't surprise me because when I was really distressed and anxious after my rape, music could be very soothing for me. I suspect one of the explanations for the depression finding is that if an individual is making music and this is an activity that they enjoy then it helps to break that negative cycle, it gets them moving and doing a pleasurable or social activity and this is a type of behavioural activation. 

Interestingly, genre isn't very important when it comes to music therapy and this is something that tends to surprise people but I understand it. I remember giving a talk at a college when I was at university working as a student ambassador about revision tips and we were talking about music. The majority of my fellow ambassadors listened to classical or calming music when studying. I listened to epic battle music or Demon Slayer music because it helped me to focus. Yet my fellow ambassadors and the students couldn't understand this, because the genre was wrong for them.

It's similar in a clinical sense. What makes music therapy effective is not the genre, the music needs to be personally meaningful to the listener and that's why I liked to listen to Demon Slayer music when I was studying. It's meaningful to me and helped me to focus. The key factor in the success of music therapy is emotional engagement, and this isn't limited to a certain genre. 

It all boils down to listening to the type of music that relaxes you the most.

What Happens to the Brain When Learning Music?

I'm always slightly jealous of people who can play music and create amazing songs, but I understand that people feel the same about me and my books. I can write books, short stories and transport people to other worlds. Therefore, this leads us to question what actually happens to the brain when someone's learning to play music and what might the neurological differences be between musicians and nonmusicians. One of the first-ever psychology topics I learnt over ten years ago was neuroplasticity, so how the brain changes itself in response to environmental demands. It makes me wonder how music changes the brain.

It turns out that professional musicians have different brain structures to non-musicians. For instance, the motor as well as auditory cortices are thicker and the corpus callosum, the bundle of fibres that connect the brain's left and right hemispheres, is larger. Also, the cerebellum, the brain area that coordinates our timing, shows structural differences too.

The professional musicians weren't born with these neurological differences. They were the result of practice because the brain needs to change itself in response to the demands we place on it. Also, whilst the earlier the musical training begins, the more pronounced the structural changes are. The brain actually remains very responsive to musical training well into adulthood and even short-term keyboard training can produce detectable changes in the auditory and motor cortices in non-musicians within weeks.

On a personal note, whilst I am pretty sure my dad is well past the age that his brain is responsive to musical training "well into adulthood", he might be happy to know if he ever did want to learn the drums or guitar, there is a little bit of hope for him on a neurological level.

However, what I am really interested in as an aspiring educational psychologist is the fact that the relationship between cognitive development and musical training has important implications for all of a child's education. As a result of students who receive a sustained music education show advantages over other students in terms of their executive function, working memory and phonological awareness. These are critical life skills and serve as the foundation for the rest of their education and learning. 

When I was a student, I flat out hated music with an utter passion, I just couldn't do it and I didn't have the motivation after a while. I dropped music as soon as I could in secondary school and I'm happy for it. Yet it is interesting to think about the benefits of giving children a real or sustained music education, even if they don't want to become musicians in the future.

How are Music Preferences Related to Personality Traits?

I won't lie so I will admit that I am slightly concerned about this next section of the episode because I really hope that I don't learn anything too bad about myself, my music preferences and my personality. Yet that is part of the fun of psychology.

As a result, there are reasons why different people prefer different types of music and one of the reasons comes back to our personality. Since research shows that people high in the personality trait of openness to experience tend to prefer unconventional and complex music like folk, classical or jazz. Whereas individuals higher in neuroticism show more of a wider-ranging preference in music because they tend to use music for regulation purposes instead of purely for enjoyment.  

Equally, people higher in agreeableness tend to prefer music with emotional accessibility and warmth whereas extroverts tend to prefer upbeat and energetic music.

A rather fun activity that you might want to try after this episode is to come back to some of these sections and think about how this information applies to your own life. For example, I know I don't score highly on extroversion and if I think about the music I enjoy, I wouldn't exactly call it upbeat and energetic. I was thinking about this yesterday and one of my favourite climaxes of an anime intro is characterised by the main character killing a king to save thousands more, but it's about showing that no one is 100% good and no one is 100% evil. Everyone is a mixture. 

I wouldn't call that climax upbeat even if it is amazing. 

How Does Music Influence Social Interactions?

Typically, music in social groups is one of the first ways how we start to recognise that music can impact behaviour and it's of interest to psychology. For example, the massive crowds and massive social groups that form around a particular artist and their music. You only need to think about the insane numbers that Taylor Swift drew all around the world for her Eras tour. Music brought all those people together and Taylor Swift is a great example, because her fans identify as Swifties. This means that her music plays a large role in their social identity. 

In a broader context, this is important because it shows us that music is important to our culture and every single known culture has music. This suggests that the pleasures and purpose of music isn't just focused on the individual. Instead music can bring pleasure to communities, cultures and social groups. For example, research shows that synchronised movement to a shared rhythm, like people clapping or moving in unison, increases feelings of cooperation and social bonding. 

In addition, research shows that when people move together to the same beat, they show more prosocial behaviour afterwards, even towards strangers. This suggests that music does impact our behaviour during social interactions through the psychological mechanism of synchrony. 

Building upon this, live concerts add another psychological layer to social interactions and music, because compared to listening to music at home, a live concert amplifies a person's emotional response and this is partly because you can see and experience the emotion of other people around you. In turn, this creates an emotional feedback loop. In other words, because you can see everyone else getting excited around you listening to the same music, your own feelings of excitement are increased and that increases the excitement in other people around you and so on.

Finally, for this section, if we apply a bit of business psychology, then music is very common in retail spaces. I always remember walking into shops from September onwards and having to listen to Christmas songs even though September is way too early for Christmas in my opinion. I always feel really sorry for retail workers because they have to listen to Christmas songs for eight hours a day, so many days a week for four months straight. That must be hell on earth as I've covered in a previous psychology news section before.

Anyway, retail spaces make very effective use of the volume, tempo and genre of background music because it can directly affect how long people stay, what products they choose and how much they buy. Research shows that classical music in a wine shop shifts purchases towards more expensive bottles whereas slower tempos extend browsing times in shops. This is important for business psychologists to understand because this is how you can shape consumer behaviour and have a real impact in commercial settings.

Cognitive Psychology Conclusion

Considering how much trouble I had coming up with a topic for Episode 400 of The Psychology World Podcast, I have to admit that I am really happy that I allowed myself to explore music psychology. It was a lot of fun, it was really thought-provoking and we certainly learnt a lot about our brain and how music impacts our mental processes, as well as our behaviour.

And as we wrap up this landmark episode, like always, I want to give you a thank you from the bottom of my heart dear listener. Without you, the Psychology World Podcast wouldn’t be a thing, I wouldn’t get to do what I love and I wouldn’t get to learn and share all this great information with you.

So, thank you so much for listening and being a part of The Psychology World Podcast. It means more to me than you could ever know.

I hope you enjoyed today’s cognitive psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET

Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Patreon for exclusive access and rewards

Have a great day.

Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading

Hodges, D. A., & McPherson, G. E. (2025). Music in the human experience: An introduction to music psychology. Taylor & Francis.

https://neurolaunch.com/psychology-of-music/

Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–575.

Koelsch, S. (2014). Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), 170–180.

Levitin, D. J. (2006). This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Dutton/Penguin Books (New York).

Más-Herrero, E., Zatorre, R. J., Rodriguez-Fornells, A., & Marco-Pallarés, J. (2014). Dissociation between musical and monetary reward responses in specific musical anhedonia. Current Biology, 24(6), 699–704.

Olsen, K. N., Terry, J., & Thompson, W. F. (2023). Psychosocial risks and benefits of exposure to heavy metal music with aggressive themes: Current theory and evidence. Current Psychology, 42(24), 21133-21150.

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1236–1256.

Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257–262.

Shuter-Dyson, R., & Gabriel, C. (2026). The psychology of musical ability. Taylor & Francis.

Singh, M., & Mehr, S. A. (2023). Universality, domain-specificity and development of psychological responses to music. Nature reviews psychology, 2(6), 333-346.

Sun, J. (2022). Exploring the impact of music education on the psychological and academic outcomes of students: mediating role of self-efficacy and self-esteem. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 841204.

Tan, S. L., Pfordresher, P., & Harré, R. (2025). Psychology of music: From sound to significance. Taylor & Francis.

Thaut, M. H., McIntosh, G. C., & Hoemberg, V. (2015). Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: Rhythmic entrainment and the motor system. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1185.

Thoma, M. V., La Marca, R., Brönnimann, R., Finkel, L., Ehlert, U., & Nater, U. M. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PLOS ONE, 8(8), e70156.

Thompson, W. F., Bullot, N. J., & Margulis, E. H. (2023). The psychological basis of music appreciation: Structure, self, source. Psychological Review, 130(1), 260.

Zentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494–521.

Zhao, J., & Yoshii, K. (2023, October). Multimodal multifaceted music emotion recognition based on self-attentive fusion of psychology-inspired symbolic and acoustic features. In 2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC) (pp. 1641-1645). IEEE.

I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page.

However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.