Auditory affective experiences as a window into the neural basis of consciousness

Abstract

Research on relatively simple forms of visual perception with limited emotional content has dominated the empirical and theoretical efforts to identify the neural basis of consciousness. In contrast, research on auditory affective experiences like misophonia, autonomous sensory meridian responses (ASMR), and musical chills promises to broaden our understanding of consciousness and challenge existing theories to accommodate a wider range of phenomena. Most notably, these experiences are driven primarily by meaningful environmental sounds but are often shaped by input from other modalities, including vision, touch, and interoception. This perspective highlights how subjective experiences may arise from interactions between sensory cortical pathways, bodily signals, and wider cortical networks implicated in emotion, interoception, and salience processing. Prior studies on misophonia, ASMR, and musical chills have indeed implicated the anterior insula, anterior cingulate, amygdala, striatum, secondary auditory cortex, and premotor cortex. These activity patterns are consistent with several mechanistic theories that explain auditory emotional experience, some of which may generalize across auditory affective phenomena, while others appear more specific to a smaller subset of them. Here, we review and synthesize findings and theoretical explanations from this growing area of research, and propose future directions aimed at identifying the commonalities and differences in mechanisms underlying auditory affective experiences.