There seems to be a universal brain reaction to music.
Problem
Aside from a variety of preferences, hearing music as music, and not just noise, we can (mostly) agree. What happens in our brain that allows us to recognize it universally as something special?
Method
At Stanford University, nine men and eight women without formal music training listened to obscure classical music (four symphonies by Late Baroque composer William Boyce) as they lay in fMRI machines. The researchers used a type of imaging that allowed them to examine all different parts of the brain throughout the time participants listened to the recording. To ensure that the brain activity they mapped was in response to the music as a whole, and not only to one of the structural features, the researchers also allowed the subjects to listen to altered versions of the symphonies: in one, all rhythm and timing was removed and in the other they were made atonal.
