Songs That Reward the Brain

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Study participant listens to music
A participant prepares to listen to new music in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.
(Image credit: Andre Gaumand)

Brain regions linked with reward, emotion and auditory memory work together to determine whether someone will like a new song enough to buy it, according to a new study published Friday (April 12) in the journal Science.

To delve into the brain's appreciation of new music, researchers narrowed down a group of participants who had similar tastes in electronica and indie rock. The volunteers could use their own money to purchase the songs, none of which they'd heard before. [Read Full Story]

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Stephanie Pappas
Stephanie Pappas
Live Science Contributor

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.