Human Musicality and The Roots of Empathy: Neural Basis, Evolution & Integration

Music is a universal trait of humankind, significantly present in lives across all cultures. Producing, listening, and feeling music engage a whole set of cognitive, emotional, social, and perceptual processes, which makes it a privileged object of investigation in the field of neuroscience. Due to its involvement in empathic engagement, affiliation, and social bonding, the affective and communicative capacities of music have become a point of exceptional interest. The association between empathy and human musicality encourages the investigation of their biological and cognitive foundations, raising multifaceted research questions. The purpose of this thesis is to individually discuss the evolutionary and neural bases of these two components; to understand their underlying affective, cognitive, biological, and social mechanisms; and ultimately to provide a unifying interpretation of their mutual interaction. This framework represents a sophisticated model, which associates the principal aspects of empathy and music research within a single scheme for promoting further research.