Music and Cognitive Processing of Emotions: Individual Differences and Psychopathology.

It is a fact: music is all around us. To this date, explanations for how (or why) music exists, how it influences our emotional life, and why it has such an important presence and influence in human environment are yet to be advanced. In this chapter, we will overview the actual knowledge of the interaction between music and emotions. In the following parts, we will define different reasons of how music may elicit emotion, and we will describe the cognitive processes that music brings forth in people. Further, we will present some historical aspects of music and emotion; then we will focus on the similarity of musical and emotional languages and see how this might enable one language to echo the other. Next, we will propose different possible theoretical explanations for the emotional impact of music. Thereafter, we will enlarge on the place music takes during the cognitive processing of emotional stimuli and environment. Finally, we will discuss how emotion identification could benefit from the use of music. Furthermore, we will point out the potential efficiency of music as a therapeutic tool in clinical populations with the objective of developing emotional communication and affective flexibility