Hearing just 16 seconds of music helps your brain predict what comes next, shaping memory, emotion, and how songs make sense.

You may have heard the claim that listening to classical music makes you smarter. But is this just a myth, or does classical music really have an effect on the brain? Music, as they say, nourishes the ...

At its core, we feel music—and now we are closer than ever to understanding why. One reason music has such an immediate impact on us is due to the way it is processed rapidly in the limbic system, the ...

Music is one of the most universal tools we have for expressing emotion, culture, and identity. People turn to it to learn, grow, and to feel. It’s no secret that music affects our mood. We listen to ...

Not long ago, I was stuck. Not in traffic or a line—but in a moment of mental fog. I couldn’t think through a decision. I couldn’t feel what I felt. Then a song popped into my head. Not one I had ...

Live musical performances speak to the soul, stimulating the brain in ways more powerful than listening to a recorded tune does, new research finds. "Our study showed that pleasant and unpleasant ...

Earworms, also known as involuntary musical imagery, are brief snippets of music that repetitively play in our minds. They can be as short as 15 to 30 seconds and often feel like they loop without end ...

In a recent study by Cell Press, scientists examined the different ways individuals auditorily process music and discovered that some individuals derive no pleasure from music at all. Beyond the ...

Listening to your favorite music activates the brain's opioid system with pleasurable and analgesic effects. A Finnish study revealed ...

"Tis harder knowing fear is due / Than knowing it is here," sings neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux with his band The Amygdaloids. The song, an adaptation of Emily Dickinson's poem "While we were fearing, ...

A: When your body is working at max capacity, your brain is overwhelmed by physical signals—breathing, heart rate, and muscle fatigue. At that level of intensity, the “distraction” or “boost” from ...