Valorie Salimpoor
Cognitive neuroscientist who had people bid real money for music they had never heard, while in a scanner.
Who they are
Salimpoor's work turned musical pleasure from a topic into a measurable one. The auction design matters because willingness to pay is a behaviour with a number attached, rather than another rating scale.
She is also co-author of the review that set out the prediction account the field now works with.
Key papers
Salimpoor, V. N., van den Bosch, I., Kovacevic, N., McIntosh, A. R., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2013). Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music reward value. Science, 340(6129), 216-219.
Zatorre, R. J., & Salimpoor, V. N. (2013). From perception to pleasure: music and its neural substrates. PNAS.
Key ideas
Activity in the mesolimbic striatum, especially the nucleus accumbens, was the best predictor of what a listener would pay for previously unheard music.
Auditory cortex, amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal regions became more active when listening required valuation, and their activity did not predict reward value.
What predicted value was increasing functional connectivity between those regions and the nucleus accumbens. Aesthetic reward appeared in an interaction rather than at a site.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1126/science.1231059
- doi:10.1073/pnas.1301228110