The power of music

listen to. The search often turns up surprises. But is it possible to tease apart our likes and dislikes to identify precisely what it is about some music that thrills us or leaves us cold? B For centuries composers have sought to create unforgettable music using accepted notions about the emotional appeal of certain combinations of sounds, yet only now are scientists starting to uncover what it is about these combinations that can have such a dramatic effect on our minds. Given that archaeologists have found musical instruments played by Neanderthals at least 50,000 years ago, why have scientists taken so long to investigate such a source of pleasure? C "For psychologists, who are always desperate to show that their work is rigorous, there's an image problem in tackling the emotionality of music," says Professor Norman Cook of Kansai University in Osaka, Japan, one of the pioneers of the new science of music. "Emotion is such a slippery topic." The other problem, says Cook, is the long-standing principle among psychologists that our response to music is an acquired one, rather than something that is stimulated by the effect of sound on our brain cells. Yet one of the first insights to emerge from this new branch of…