How does your brain listen to music?

According to the Harvard Gazette: Your inner ear contains a spiral sheet that the sounds of music pluck like a guitar string. This plucking triggers the firing of brain cells that make up the hearing parts of your brain. At the highest station, the auditory cortex, just above your ears, these firing cells generate the conscious experience of music. Different patterns of firing excite other ensembles of cells, and these associate the sound of music with feelings, thoughts, and past experiences.

I've written quite a bit about how music elicits tremendous emotion when you hear songs from your adolescence or teen years. This music can shift you to a whole different emotional state and place. Now you know a little more about it!