Music and Emotions

According to researchers from Northwestern University, musicians are better attuned to detecting emotions in sound.
Their study provides the first biological evidence that musical training improves a person's ability to recognize emotion in speech or sound. The more years of musical experience the musicians has and the earlier they began their training, the better their nervous system's ability to process emotion in sound.
Researchers observed the subjects' brain stem responses to pitch, timing and timbre of a scientifically tested sound. Participants, aged 19 to 35, listened to a 150 millisecond fragment of a distressed baby's cry. Electrodes measured their responses on whether musicians or non musicians could zero in on the complex emotional part of the sound as opposed to the more basic element of the sound. The music-minded members of the study fared well, possessing "finely tuned" auditory systems.
According to another study of music recognition conducted by Richard Ashley, associate professor at Northwestern, musicians might even be able to sense emotion in sounds after hearing them for a mere 50 milliseconds.
Study author Dana Strait believes musical training may help people Asperger's syndrome and autism better identify emotion in others.
Interesting where studies are leading researchers and helping subjects.