Abstract
Musical pleasure is the hedonic response deeply related to the sensation and the reward system. Given that music unfolds through time, various neuroscience studies suggest electrophysiological evidence of pleasure by investigating the temporal dynamics of musical emotions over the decades. According to these studies, it is plausible that theta frequency from the frontal, temporal, or medial cortex is associated with musical pleasure. This research investigates the structure of theta activity in the brain during music listening with music-invoked pleasure through a systematic review. We utilized the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines to select the literature for the review and choose 14 studies that met our criteria. This review examines the definition of musical pleasure, the methodology to quantify it, and musical characteristics associated with theta activity during pleasurable events. Our investigation suggests that enhanced theta activity in the frontomedial regions may be a biomarker of musical pleasure. This result can be employed in music recommendation systems, composition via artificial intelligence, or the field of a brain-computer interface.