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Why do some songs lift your mood. while others make you cry?   You know the feeling. You may be listening to a track by The Prodigy or Jack Johnson, or a soaring guitar solo by Brian May, and suddenly your whole mood changes – from down-and-out to up-and-at-”em, from chaotic to calm.

The mind-altering power of music is breathtaking – and in demand as never before.

To meet the craving, music sites are using ever more sophisticated ways of putting us in touch with artists we may not even know we like. Most work by trawling our existing files or online listening habits and looking for patterns. An internet music service analyses the 800 million requests it gets each month along with tags added by users to come up with new artist recommendations. Known as “scrobbling”, the technique often turns up surprises. They’ve learned that AC/DC fans are likely to like Beethoven.

But what can the music of an Australian hard rock band have in common with the likes of the Moonlight Sonata? IS it possible to tease apart those lists of likes and dislikes to identify precisely what it is about some music that thrills us or leaves us cold?

For centuries composers have sought to create unforgettable music using rules of thumb about the emotional appeal of certain combination of sounds. Yet only now are scientists starting to uncover what it is about these combination that can have such a dramatic effect on our minds.

Given that archaeologists have found musical instruments played by Neanderthals at least 50,000 years ago, why have scientists taken so long to investigate such a source of pleasure?

“For psychologists, who are always desperate to show their work is rigorous, there’s an image problem in tacking the emotionality of music,” says Professor Norman Cook (no relation to Fat boy Slim) of Kansai University in Osaka, Japan, one of the pioneers of the new science of music. “Emotionis such a slippery topic.”

The other problem, says Cook, is the long-standing dogma among academics taht our response to music is acquired rather than stimulated by the effect of sound on our brains. Yet one of the first insights to emerge from this new branch of psychology is that music affects our brains at a basic level.

Together with his colleague Professor Takefumi Hayashi, Cook has been investigating one of the best known examples of the emotional impact of music: the difference between major and minor chords. Since the Renaissance, composers have known that notes should be arranged to form major chords sound mournful For example, “The Beach Boy” bouncy Wouldn’t it be Nice? is replete with major chords, while “The Beatles” regret-filled Yesterday features minor chords.

In tests, even three-year-olds have been shown to link music in a major mode to happy faces and minor modes to sad faces.  According to Cook,analysis of how people respond to notes suggests a link with how our brains interpret certain sounds in everyday life.  He points out that sad-sounding minor chords can be formed by raising the pitch of any of a ser of notes producing an ambigous sound, while dropping the pitch produces a major chord.  The same change in pitch works as an emotional tell-tale in animal communicate weakness or defeat, while falling pitch signals social dominance.  It’s also present in human speech.  “A rising inflection is used to denote questions, politeness or defence, whereas a falling inflection signals dominance,”says Cook.

This suggests that music in major and minor modes taps into some basic features of how we relate to the world and each other – perhaps dating back millions of years.  Could music in general be doing something similar?  Quite possibly, according to research into how music triggers certain types of brain activity.  At McGill University in Quebec, Professor Robert Zatorre and his colleagues have carried out studies in which volunteers listen to different types of music while their brain activity is monitored with medical scanners.

Chen believes the discovery of this deep conenction between music and movement may cast light on why disabled patients can benefit from listening to music – and could also prove useful with other impairments.  “Auditory-motor integration is also important in speech.  It’s been shown that people who stutter might have problems in this auditory-motor loop.”

For researchers working in this new area of science, these early discoveries hold the promse of much more to come.   At McGill University, Zattore and his colelagues are investigating whether some people have more musical brains than others.

“We can see certain subtle brain features that can tell is how well somebody can do things like recognise a slight change in a melody,”  explains Zattore.  “The ability couldbe enhanced by training – just like someone born with a pre-disposition to building strong muscles can enhance them by taking up weightlifting.”

Might the science of music one day allow computers to give us music specifically designed to appealto us? At Kansai University, Professor Cook for one doesn’t rule it out.

“I think the answer is potentially yes”,” he says.