Abstract
This paper argues for a biological conception of music listening as an evolutionary achievement that is related to a long history of cognitive and affective-emotional functions, which are grounded in basic homeostatic regulation. Starting from the three levels of description, the acoustic description of sounds, the neurological level of processing, and the psychological correlates of neural stimulation, it conceives of listeners as open systems that are in continuous interaction with the sonic world. By monitoring and altering their current state, they can try to stay within the limits of operating set points in the pursuit of a controlled state of dynamic equilibrium, which is fueled by interoceptive and exteroceptive sources of information. Listening, in this homeostatic view, can be adaptive and goal-directed with the aim of maintaining the internal physiology and directing behavior towards conditions that make it possible to thrive by seeking out stimuli that are valued as beneficial and worthy, or by attempting to avoid those that are annoying and harmful. This calls forth the mechanisms of pleasure and reward, the distinction between pleasure and enjoyment, the twin notions of valence and arousal, the affect-related consequences of music listening, the role of affective regulation and visceral reactions to the sounds, and the distinction between adaptive and maladaptive listening.
Highlights
Music listening is an evolutionary achievement that has its origins in a long history of cognitive and affective-emotional functions, which are themselves grounded in basic homeostatic regulation [1,2]
Music may function as a reward system that capitalizes on emotional reactions and aesthetic responses by eliciting the limbic and paralimbic activations that are involved in affective processing, with the distinction between rewarding or aversive properties of the stimuli as a major dividing line [44]
Starting from the claim that music listening is an evolutionary achievement that is based on cognitive and affective-emotional functions, we have tried to align it with the principles of homeostatic regulation
Summary
Music listening is an evolutionary achievement that has its origins in a long history of cognitive and affective-emotional functions, which are themselves grounded in basic homeostatic regulation [1,2]. A biological conceptualization of auditory processing places musical understanding and interpretation as a way of adapting to the sonic world in the pursuit of internal equilibrium [3,4] This is the neurobiological and psychobiological approach to musical sense-making as “coping with the sounds”, which, on the one hand, aims to steer clear of those stimuli that are considered harmful for the maintenance of basic homeostatic level setting (see below) and, on the other hand, is in search of stimuli in the optimal zone of stimulation. In that view, is reactive behavior, but involves making sense of the sonic environment as well, ranging from overt physical reactions to mental and cognitive operations Arguing on these lines, we theorize that coping mechanisms became a part of our musicality, which is composed of many other adaptive abilities, such as the ability to synchronize our movements or to recognize musical pitch. The emotive response to the sonic world in general is present for music [5,7]
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