ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to describe two traditional empirical approaches to neurocognitive music research and their findings on cortical music-sound encoding, as well as the first attempts to investigate the brain basis of musical emotions. In both viewpoints, music and musicians offer a fruitful means for investigating human behavior at a very high cognitive and creative level in a well-controlled setting. Frequency modifications in music sounds were predominantly encoded in the right auditory cortex, while in speech sounds, they activated the auditory areas bilaterally. The data obtained by Tervaniemi and colleagues indicated that speech and music sound patterns activate separate brain areas in the temporal and frontal lobes. The data indicated a left-hemispheric dominance for speech sounds and a tendency toward a right-hemispheric dominance for musical sounds. In music, the existence of novel, unexpected sound events is in a key position to keep the listener alert and, if present in an appropriate degree, also important in creating positive emotions.
