Lost in music: Neural signature of pleasure and its role in modulating attentional resources

•We studied the neural signature of positive and neutral valence with music.•We examined performance in a visual memory task in different music conditions.•Longer exposure to pleasant music led to higher spectral power and pleasantness score.•Theta power was positively correlated with pleasantness scores in the course of music.•Memory task performance during pleasant music was lower compared to neutral music. We investigated the neural correlates of pleasure induced by listening to highly pleasant and neutral musical excerpts using electroencephalography (EEG). Power spectrum analysis of EEG data showed a distinct gradual change in the power of low-frequency oscillations in response to highly pleasant, but not neutral, musical excerpts. Specifically, listening to highly pleasant music was associated with (i) relatively higher oscillatory activity in the theta band over the frontocentral (FC) area and in the alpha band over the parieto-occipital area, and (ii) a gradual increase in the oscillatory power over time. Correlation analysis between behavioral and electrophysiological data revealed that theta power over the FC electrodes was correlated with subjective assessment of pleasantness while listening to music. To study the link between attention and positive valence in our experiments, volunteers performed a delayed match-to-sample memory task while listening to the musical excerpts. The subjects’ performances were significantly lower under highly pleasant conditions compared to neutral conditions. Listening to pleasant music requires higher degrees of attention, leading to the observed decline in memory performance. Gradual development of low-frequency oscillations in the frontal and posterior areas may be at least partly due to gradual recruitment of higher levels of attention over time in response to pleasurable music.