Psyche Loui (College of Arts, Media and Design, Northeastern University): Prediction and Reward in Music Across the Lifespan

Prediction and Reward in Music Across the Lifespan

Psyche Loui

Northeastern University

Music is one of life’s greatest pleasures. While abundant evidence points to the role of predictability (i.e. the knowledge of what comesnext) in the experience of pleasure, little is known about how predictable musical features (e.g. melody, harmony, rhythm) come to berewarding. I will present new work in my lab on behavioral and neuroimaging studies of the relationship between musical predictionsand their reward value. Our behavioral studies test whether and how it is possible to acquire reward value solely from newly-formedpredictions, by exposing participants to novel, acoustically-controlled musical stimuli with different statistical properties withoutextrinsic paired rewards. Our neuroimaging studies capitalize on activity of the dopaminergic reward system, and its connectivity tothe auditory system, to test for individual differences in reward sensitivity from music. Results show that this reward sensitivity isdependent on age and on short-term experience as well as long-term experiences with specific musical predictions encodedthroughout the lifespan.