ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on music's ability to activate the reward system with its underlying dopamine-opioid neurochemistry and affiliative vocalizations. It shows how music activates brain regions and neurochemistry associated with these two aspects of behavior and suggests that music's ability to drive the reward system is not limited to processes of prediction of abstract sequences. The phenomenon of chills as experienced in music listening is characterized by shivers down the spine or goosebumps, and is often associated with intense pleasure. The chapter aims to combine data from human studies on music with relevant data from studies of social animals in which singing or complex vocalizations serve as motivated and directed social signals which involve activity in the reward system. The unique ability of music to entrain bodily movements and to induce motor and emotional synchronization among those participating in its making make it especially adept at confering feelings of unity, affiliation, and social bonding.
