Behind the pleasure of listening to a song lies an astonishing brain activity: an anticipatory mechanism that translates simple vibrations into emotions. The mechanical movement of this membrane’s cilia is transformed into an electrical signal that travels along the auditory nerve all the way to the brain. “All frequency and temporal variations are reproduced in the auditory nerve, a little like a spectrogram,” Gourévitch explains. All rights reserved Share ShareThe brain is on the beat…For the brain, repetitive musical rhythms and structures play a special role. “When something is repeated, reorganisation and neuroplasticity mechanisms are set in motion, and become extremely powerful for the auditory brain,” stresses Daniel Pressnitzer, a CNRS research professor at the LSP perceptual systems laboratory .