Expressing Emotions Through Music

Music evokes strong emotions across listeners although it conveys no biologically relevant information regarding the survival challenges in the environment. Here we review the neurobiology and psychology of emotional communication through music, focussing on the functions and mechanisms of musical emotional expressions in social interaction and extend our analysis of the communicative space beyond the pure acoustic features to the interaction of musical emotional cues with other verbal and nonverbal communication channels. Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies shows functional overlap for brain systems involved in music production and emotions. Musical emotion communication however differs from other common expressive channels (faces and bodies, utterances, and semantics) in its timescale, context, spontaneity and interactivity. Because musical emotional communication can be modulated by affective information communicated through other verbal and nonverbal channels, musical communication provides a flexible means for context-dependent and culturally malleable communication of emotions, which is particularly well suited for large-scale social affiliation and bonding.