Week 5 Short FXA300 Week 5: Music, Mind and Body - My Music Taste

Musical processing utilises two primary mechanisms: bottom-up processing, where components are pieced together from the senses, and top-down processing, which involves heuristics, memories, and quick matching.
Critical brain networks include the primary and secondary auditory cortices for encoding and analysis, the superior temporal gyrus for melody and contour, and the cerebellum, thalamus, and basal ganglia for rhythmic entrainment.

Taste is an inner sense or cognitive faculty expressed through immediate reactions to stimulus features like sound, rhythm, and style.
Arousal triggers dopaminergic, serotonergic, and adrenergic pathways; the extent of these neurochemical releases develops individual preferences.
These biological responses culminate in aesthetics—the underlying appreciation of creativity, beauty, and objects.

Rentfrow et al. ( $2011$ ) proposed that emotional and aural qualities describe preference more accurately than broad genres.
The Five-Factor Model (MUSIC) identifies underlying characteristics:
- Mellow: Smooth, relaxing.
- Urban: Rhythmic, percussive.
- Sophisticated: Classical, jazz, and world music.
- Intense: Loud, energetic, forceful.
- Campestral: Direct, rootsy.
Preferences are shaped by auditory features (tempo, harmony, loudness) and socio-cultural associations (lifestyle, identity, values).

Personality is categorised using the Big Five traits (OCEAN/CANOE): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
A study by Greenberg et al. ( $2022$ ) assessed $356,649$ participants across six continents to link OCEAN traits to the MUSIC model.
Study $1$ included $n = 284,935$ across $53$ countries, and study $2$ included $n = 71,714$ across $36$ countries.

Within genres, "taste communities" exist, such as the split between opera and chamber fans in classical music.
Cultural tastes function as markers of social differentiation and identity (Bourdieu).
Mainstream vs. specialised preferences relate to prototypicality and fluency; sub-genres closer to the genre core are often less cognitively demanding.
Musical intensity and consumption correlate with the season and Time-of-Day (ToD), though high-intensity music is consistently chosen throughout the day (Park et al., $2019$ ).

Significant hormonal and social shifts make music experienced between ages $10$ and $20$ the most influential for later preferences.
The average age for this influence is approximately $14$ (Levitin, $2009$ ).
Individuals recognise a higher volume of songs popular when they were between $10$ and $30$ years old (Zimprich \& Wolf, $2015$ ).
Early exposure by parents leads to intergenerational continuity of taste (Ter Bogt et al., $2011$ ).

Major genres include classical, jazz, popular, blues, gospel, rock, country, metal, hip-hop, fusion, folk, traditional, world, and electronic.
Subgenres provide specialised distinctions, ranging from Afro-Cuban jazz and K-pop to highly specific labels like blackened death, urban country metal tinged with just the slightest hint of paprika.