People who deeply grasp pain or happiness of others, process music differently in brain

People who deeply grasp the pain or happiness of others also process music differently, say researchers. The study in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience compared MRI scans of low- and high-empathy people. Higher empathy people process music like a pleasurable proxy for a human encounter — in brain regions for reward and social awareness. The findings may have implications for the function of music now and in our evolutionary past.