ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Live music stimulates the affective brain and emotionally entrains listeners in real time.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Effects of music-based interventions on test anxiety in students: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Music in the loop: a systematic review of current neurofeedback methodologies using music.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Musician presence and its effects on physiological and psychological well-being in live versus livestreamed concerts.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- Expressing emotions through music.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Singing in the brain.Japanese journal of radiology · 2026Review
- Live music enhances self-reported audience immersion and physiological synchrony compared to live-streaming.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Unveiling the Humanizing and Therapeutic Values of Live Music in Healthcare Settings: A Scoping Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- MusicAlzheimer: AI-Powered, Culturally Tailored Digital Music Therapy Prototype for Alzheimer Disease Care.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- From lab to concert hall: effects of live performance on neural-acoustic phase-locking and engagement.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- A study on the emotional accuracy of generative AI music from the perspective of the "Emotion Wheel" theory.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Music listening patterns and their associations with mood regulation, emotional processing, and cognitive performance: an intensive longitudinal questionnaire study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Watching live performances enhances subjective and physiological emotional responses compared to viewing the same performance on screen.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2025Article
- From Lab to Concert Hall: Effects of Live Performance on Neural Entrainment and Engagement.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The Use of Neurologic Music Therapy in Post-Stroke Aphasia Recovery: A Case Report on Linguistic Improvements and fMRI Correlates.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Sound quality impacts dogs' ability to recognize and respond to playback words.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Music intervention in precision shooting: mechanisms, effects, and future directions-a literature review.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Review
- Live music stimulates the affective brain and emotionally entrains listeners in real time.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Preventive Effects of Light Music on Postpartum Anxiety and Depression in Primiparous Women.Noise & healthArticle
- Music Therapy as a Tool for Alleviating Anxiety and Pain in Patients Undergoing Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.Noise & healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Music is powerful in conveying emotions and triggering affective brain mechanisms. Affective brain responses in previous studies were however rather inconsistent, potentially because of the non-adaptive nature of recorded music used so far. Live music instead can be dynamic and adaptive and is often modulated in response to audience feedback to maximize emotional responses in listeners. Here, we introduce a setup for studying emotional responses to live music in a closed-loop neurofeedback setup. This setup linked live performances by musicians to neural processing in listeners, with listeners' amygdala activity was displayed to musicians in real time. Brain activity was measured using functional MRI, and especially amygdala activity was quantified in real time for the neurofeedback signal. Live pleasant and unpleasant piano music performed in response to amygdala neurofeedback from listeners was acoustically very different from comparable recorded music and elicited significantly higher and more consistent amygdala activity. Higher activity was also found in a broader neural network for emotion processing during live compared to recorded music. This finding included observations of the predominance for aversive coding in the ventral striatum while listening to unpleasant music, and involvement of the thalamic pulvinar nucleus, presumably for regulating attentional and cortical flow mechanisms. Live music also stimulated a dense functional neural network with the amygdala as a central node influencing other brain systems. Finally, only live music showed a strong and positive coupling between features of the musical performance and brain activity in listeners pointing to real-time and dynamic entrainment processes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.