title: Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music.
abstract: Humans uniquely appreciate aesthetics, experiencing pleasurable responses to complex stimuli that confer no clear intrinsic value for survival. However, substantial variability exists in the frequency and specificity of aesthetic responses. While pleasure from aesthetics is attributed to the neural circuitry for reward, what accounts for individual differences in aesthetic reward sensitivity remains unclear. Using a combination of survey data, behavioral and psychophysiological measures and diffusion tensor imaging, we found that white matter connectivity between sensory processing areas in the superior temporal gyrus and emotional and social processing areas in the insula and medial prefrontal cortex explains individual differences in reward sensitivity to music. Our findings provide the first evidence for a neural basis of individual differences in sensory access to the reward system, and suggest that social-emotional communication through the auditory channel may offer an evolutionary basis for music making as an aesthetically rewarding function in humans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Sachs
authors.affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, 02215, Boston, MA, and.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, 02215, Boston, MA, and.
authors.forename: Gottfried
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schlaug
authors.affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, 02215, Boston, MA, and Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience and Behavior, Wesleyan University 06459, Middletown, CT, USA ploui@wesleyan.edu.
authors.forename: Psyche
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Loui
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D004954:Esthetics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology*; D057181:Pleasure / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward; D066127:White Matter / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: DTI; aesthetics; chills; connectivity; music; psychophysiological