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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on November 3, 2006
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2006 1(3):235-241; doi:10.1093/scan/nsl029
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Music and mirror neurons: from motion to ’e’motion

Istvan Molnar-Szakacs1,2,3 and Katie Overy4

1Center for the Biology of Creativity, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, 2FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA, 3Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, 1015 Switzerland, and 4Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, School of Arts, Culture and Environment, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9DF, UK

The ability to create and enjoy music is a universal human trait and plays an important role in the daily life of most cultures. Music has a unique ability to trigger memories, awaken emotions and to intensify our social experiences. We do not need to be trained in music performance or appreciation to be able to reap its benefits—already as infants, we relate to it spontaneously and effortlessly. There has been a recent surge in neuroimaging investigations of the neural basis of musical experience, but the way in which the abstract shapes and patterns of musical sound can have such profound meaning to us remains elusive. Here we review recent neuroimaging evidence and suggest that music, like language, involves an intimate coupling between the perception and production of hierarchically organized sequential information, the structure of which has the ability to communicate meaning and emotion. We propose that these aspects of musical experience may be mediated by the human mirror neuron system.

Keywords: language; communication; hierarchy; Brodmann Area 44; insula

Correspondence should be addressed to Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, PhD, Center for the Biology of Creativity, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, 760 Westwood Plaza, C8-846, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA. E-mail: imolnar{at}ucla.edu


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