How does it work even with infants and animals?
In: Biology
It doesn’t. Something else triggers the emotion, such as your understanding of the lyrics or your aesthetic sense. Your brain stores memories much more powerfully when those memories are associated with emotions, because emotional circuits firing basically put your brain into a state of “something important is happening, better remember it!”. Over time, with enough of these memories, your brain begins to tap into those memories when you hear music, even new music, and when your brain taps into a memory it feels a portion of the same emotion you were feeling when the memory was created.
The appreciation of music in the first place appears to be a side effect of the evolution of communication. Animals only respond to music that is somewhat close to the way they naturally communicate – cats for example are completely indifferent to human music, but become curious about “music” that revolves around the patterns and pitches that cats use to communicate, including purring. However, humans appear to have a far more complex and wide ranging appreciation for music than animals do, even going beyond the normal means we use to communicate. For example, some humans apparently like heavy metal.
It’s all to do with melody. You could have the saddest song with the most upbeat instrumental and you would be confused on how to feel. In elementary school a teacher of mine said “if you put on a horror movie and mute it, it won’t be frightening”. There’s been studies to where there are inconstancies in suspense music and that how it works, it literally alarms your hearing sensories
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