第1段

Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deeply. When listening to our favourite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots.

为什么音乐会让我们产生情感？一方面，音乐是一种纯粹的抽象艺术形式，没有语言或明确的观念。然而，尽管音乐所言甚少，它仍然能够深深触动我们。当我们听我们最喜欢的歌曲时，我们的身体会出现情绪激发的所有症状。我们的瞳孔会扩大，脉搏和血压会上升，皮肤的电导率会降低，与肢体运动相关的大脑区域小脑也会变得活跃。甚至血液会重新流向我们的腿部肌肉。换句话说，声音在我们的生物本能中激起了我们的情感。

第2段

A recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by a research team in Montreal, Canada, marks an important step in revealing the precise underpinnings of ‘the potent pleasurable stimulus‘ that is music. Although the study involves plenty of fancy technology, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and ligand-based positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, the experiment itself was rather straightforward. After screening 217 individuals who responded to advertisements requesting people who experience ‘chills’ to instrumental music, the scientists narrowed down the subject pool to ten. They then asked the subjects to bring in their playlist of favourite songs – virtually every genre was represented, from techno to tango – and played them the music while their brain activity was monitored. Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI), they were able to obtain an impressively exact and detailed portrait of music in the brain. The first thing they discovered is that music triggers the production of dopamine – a chemical with a key role in setting people’s moods – by the neurons (nerve cells) in both the dorsal and ventral regions of the brain. As these two regions have long been linked with the experience of pleasure, this finding isn’t particularly surprising.

加拿大蒙特利尔的一个研究团队最近在《自然神经科学》杂志上发表的一篇论文标志着揭示音乐所具有的“强大愉悦刺激”的精确基础的重要一步。尽管该研究涉及到许多高端技术，包括功能性磁共振成像（FMRI）和基于配体的正电子发射断层扫描（PET）扫描，但实验本身相当简单。在筛选了217名回应要求对器乐音乐有“寒战”反应的人之后，科学家们将被试范围缩小到了十个人。然后他们要求被试带来他们最喜欢的歌曲列表，几乎涵盖了各种类型的音乐，从技术音乐到探戈音乐。在监测他们的大脑活动时，科学家们播放了这些音乐。由于科学家们结合了PET和fMRI两种方法，他们能够获得一个令人印象深刻、精确而详细的音乐在大脑中的画像。他们首先发现的是音乐会触发多巴胺的产生，多巴胺是一种在调节人们情绪方面起关键作用的化学物质，它由大脑背侧和腹侧区域的神经元（神经细胞）产生。由于这两个区域长期以来与愉悦体验有关，因此这一发现并不特别令人惊讶。

第3段

What is rather more significant is the finding that the dopamine neurons in the caudate – a region of the brain involved in learning stimulus-response associations, and in anticipating food and other ‘reward’ stimuli – were at their most active around 15 seconds before the participants’ favourite moments in the music. The researchers call this the ‘anticipatory phase’； and argue that the purpose of this activity is to help us predict the arrival of our favourite part. The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to. Why are they so active in the period preceding the acoustic climax? After all, we typically associate surges of dopamine with pleasure, with the processing of actual rewards. And yet, this cluster of cells is most active when the ‘chills’ have yet to arrive, when the melodic pattern is still unresolved.

更重要的发现是，多巴胺神经元在前庭核（大脑的一个区域，与学习刺激-反应关联、预测食物和其他“奖励”刺激有关）在被试最喜欢的音乐片段前约15秒内最活跃。研究人员称之为“预期阶段”，并认为这种活动的目的是帮助我们预测我们最喜欢的部分的到来。当然，问题是所有这些多巴胺神经元在干什么。为什么它们在声音高潮到来之前如此活跃？毕竟，我们通常将多巴胺的激增与愉悦、实际奖励的处理联系起来。然而，这群细胞在“寒战”还未到来、旋律模式仍未解决时最活跃。

第4段

One way to answer the question is to look at the music and not the neurons. While music can often seem (at least to the outsider) like a labyrinth of intricate patterns, it turns out that the most important part of every song or symphony is when the patterns break down, when the sound becomes unpredictable. If the music is too obvious, it is annoyingly boring, like an alarm clock. Numerous studies, after all, have demonstrated that dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what’s going to happen next, then we don’t get excited. This is why composers often introduce a key note in the beginning of a song, spend most of the rest of the piece in the studious avoidance of the pattern, and then finally repeat it only at the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound.

回答这个问题的一种方法是看音乐而不是神经元。虽然音乐通常看起来（至少对外行人来说）像是一个错综复杂的模式迷宫，但事实证明，每首歌曲或交响乐的最重要部分是当模式被打破，声音变得不可预测时。如果音乐太明显，就会令人厌烦，像一个闹钟。许多研究已经证明，多巴胺神经元很快适应可预测的奖励。如果我们知道接下来会发生什么，我们就不会兴奋。这就是为什么作曲家通常在歌曲开始时引入一个关键音符，大部分时间避免使用该模式，然后最后只在结束时重复它。我们被剥夺了我们期望的模式的时间越长，当模式安全无恙地返回时，情感释放就越大。

第5段

To demonstrate this psychological principle, the musicologist Leonard Meyer, in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956), analysed the 5th movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. Meyer wanted to show how music is defined by its flirtation with – but not submission to – our expectations of order. Meyer dissected 50 measures (bars) of the masterpiece, showing how Beethoven begins with the clear statement of a rhythmic and harmonic pattern and then, in an ingenious tonal dance, carefully holds off repeating it. What Beethoven does instead is suggest variations of the pattern. He wants to preserve an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us. Beethoven saves that chord for the end.

为了证明这个心理原理，音乐学家莱纳德·梅耶在他的经典著作《音乐中的情感和意义》（1956年）中分析了贝多芬的C#小调弦乐四重奏的第五乐章，作为音乐如何通过与我们对秩序的期望的调情而不是顺从来定义的例子。梅耶剖析了这个杰作的50小节，展示了贝多芬如何以明确陈述的节奏和和声模式开始，然后在巧妙的音调舞蹈中小心地避免重复它。贝多芬所做的是暗示该模式的变化。他想在音乐中保留一种不确定性的元素，让我们的大脑渴望他拒绝给我们的一个和弦。贝多芬将那个和弦留到了最后。

第6段

According to Meyer, it is the suspenseful tension of music, arising out of our unfulfilled expectations, that is the source of the music’s feeling. While earlier theories of music focused on the way a sound can refer to the real world of images and experiences – its ‘connotative‘ meaning – Meyer argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This ‘embodied meaning’ arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores. It is this uncertainty that triggers the surge of dopamine in the caudate, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next. We can predict some of the notes, but we can’t predict them all, and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the pattern to be completed.