I’m of the opinion that if we can ever clearly state why human beings enjoy music, we will also be able to create the first artificial and fully conscious brain. I’ve been thinking about a theory that the reason we like music is related to the reason our brain has worked in a manner that has made us such a successful species.

Human evolution is like software in that each stage of complexity has made the following stage much easier, and a lot more likely to happen spontaneously.

To explain, imagine I asked you to draw a simple sketch of a car using software. If you used line art to do it, you would have a lot of work to do. However, imagine you first programmed a structured called "Box" which represents a simple box. THEN, you construct the car out of a series of Boxes.

The first step is easy to do. The second step is also easy to do. If you do not make the split into two different steps, you face quite a complex task.

Human evolution has followed a similar path - the original brains of the first multiple celled organisms could react to the simple stimuli they were exposed to. Further organisms were not evolutions from scratch, they were simple the second step of a process that had a first step already completed.

What does this have to do with music? Along our evolutionary pathway, we entered a stage where the brains available searched for patterns, and reacted to patterns. For example, let’s say you walk out on the street, and you see a pirate looking in a shop window. This would be strange, but would not trigger any behaviour. Lets say you walk 4 shops down, and you see a sailor looking in a window. Your pattern matching skill will immediately trigger and your brain will start looking to see if it can further find more items that fit that series.

A pirate and sailor are unlikely to affect you, but you are still looking to complete the series. Your brain is interested in patterns regardless of if they will affect you directly or not.

Recognizing patterns and expecting them to happen again is the key to our evolutionary success. Crocodiles will always repeat the same actions given the same stimuli. They do not learn by observing patterns. However, imagine you had the jaws and appetite of a crocodile, and you observed that every time you lunged at Steve Irwin, he would escape from your jaws, you would stop trying after a while. You have recognized a pattern and you expect the pattern to continue.

My point: We have an inbuilt system that loves pattern matching. It’s the key to our success.

Where does music come in? Music is enjoyable to us because it activates our pattern matching skill. Music has rhythm, harmony or some other repeating form. When we recognize the repetition, our pattern recognition part gets fired up, and we get a small brain reward for having recognized that pattern.

In my theory, this is why people tend to stick with a certain genre of music - they are comfortable with the patterns that come in that music, so they get the most satisfaction from that type of music.