Sound is air in motion. We all know that sound moves our hair cells, but sound moves us in other ways too. Hearing is coupled with feeling: In the brain, the auditory and emotional systems are interconnected by feedforward and feedback pathways, and reward-related neurotransmitters such as dopamine are expressed in the auditory centers of the brain. Over the past decade, audiology has made a conceptual leap by recognizing that cognition is involved in hearing. We think that emotion—how we feel about sound and how sound moves us affectively—is an equally important part of hearing.
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