This is really interesting regarding the pleasure of listening to music, and other fascinating insights.
But if you’ve ever taken a physiology or anatomy course, you know that between the ear and the cortex, there are at least three or four subcortical structures that you have to get through that process sound. So from the ear, you go to the cochlear nucleus and then you go to the inferior colliculus, then you go to the middle geniculate. It’s what you learn in first-year anatomy class. But until very recently, our brain scanners could not even see those structures because they’re quite small. They’re very tiny. It doesn’t mean they’re not important. They’re just small, so they’re hard to see. So almost all of our theories are about the cortex, even though we know that by the time the sound information gets to the cortex, it’s been pre-processed three or four layers.
So now we have much higher resolution magnetic resonance imaging devices, which allow us to see these structures. The inferior colliculus is about the size of half of the nail on your little finger, 4 or 5 millimeters across. But now we can see it. We can actually visualize it.
Speaking of Psychology: Why does music move us? With Robert Zatorre, PhD
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/music