Music

Music encompasses both an art form and a universal mode of human expression, integrating sound, silence and rhythm to convey emotion, structure social life and shape cognition. From simple pitch and temporal patterns to complex polyphony and electronic textures, music spans genres, cultures and technologies. Neuroscientific research has traced fundamental auditory pathways in the brain that process melody, harmony, timbre and metre, while predictive-coding frameworks highlight the interplay between expectation and surprise in musical experience. Cultural studies reveal how music co-evolves with social institutions—from ritual chanting and dance to global streaming platforms—reflecting and influencing identity, memory and social cohesion. Technological advances, from phonographic recording through digital audio workstations to machine-learning algorithms for composition and analysis, have continuously reshaped creative practice, distribution and consumption. Applications extend from clinical therapy—where rhythmic entrainment aids motor and speech rehabilitation—to education, entertainment and community building, attesting to music’s profound global impact.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Large-scale cross-cultural experiments have demonstrated that listeners in diverse societies converge on a sparse set of discrete temporal intervals—simple integer ratios—when reproducing random rhythms, indicating universal neural biases that stabilise rhythmic traditions amid cultural variation. Analyses of vocalisations collected from over twenty societies further reveal that spectro-temporal modulation patterns alone reliably distinguish song from speech, both for machine-learning classifiers and naïve listeners, suggesting fundamental acoustical cues in auditory segmentation. In healthy older adults, a year of piano training has been shown to strengthen resting-state functional connectivity within the right dorsal auditory stream and between auditory and motor regions, paralleling improvements in fine motor dexterity and reflecting enhanced auditory-motor integration in ageing brains.

Research from all publishers

Deploying naturalistic paradigms, magnetoencephalography studies have linked the subjective experience of groove—the compelling urge to move—to coordinated delta- and beta-band oscillations in the dorsal auditory-motor network, supporting a neurodynamic model of predictive timing in music listening. Simultaneously, calls for ecological validity in auditory neuroscience advocate embracing real-world listening contexts—such as full-ensemble recordings and live performance—to capture authentic brain and behavioural responses. Foundational work in neurologic music therapy has established rhythmic entrainment as a mechanism by which patterned auditory cues can synchronise movement and speech networks, yielding therapeutic gains in patients with motor disorders.

Music publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in music across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Rhythm priors: Internal temporal templates—often at simple integer ratios—that bias the perception and reproduction of rhythmic patterns.

Spectro-temporal modulation: Combined variations in frequency and amplitude over time that characterise acoustic signals and underpin speech-song distinctions.

Functional connectivity: Statistical correlations of neural activity between distinct brain regions, indicating coordinated network function.

Dorsal auditory stream: A pathway linking auditory cortex to parietal and motor regions, essential for sensorimotor synchrony and predictive timing.

Rhythmic entrainment: The alignment of neural or motor oscillations with external rhythmic stimuli, used in rehabilitative therapy.

References

1. Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries. Nature Human Behaviour (2024).
2. Spectro-temporal acoustical markers differentiate speech from song across cultures. Nature Communications (2024).
3. Increased functional connectivity in the right dorsal auditory stream after a full year of piano training in healthy older adults. Scientific Reports (2023).
4. Neural dynamics of predictive timing and motor engagement in music listening. Science Advances (2024).
5. The neuroscience of music – towards ecological validity. Trends in Neurosciences (2023).
6. Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: rhythmic entrainment and the motor system. Frontiers in Psychology (2015).