Emotional perception of music depends on our genes Neuroscientists have studied the effect of the polymorphism in the D2 dopamine receptor gene on the emotional perception of music. They found that music and noise differently modulate emotional state in a human, who has one of two unique variants of this genes. The first variant determines the improvement in mood from the music and a neutral effect from the noise. Who has the second variant, music has a little effect on the mood of them, in contrast, the noise has seriously affected. The scientists have identified that carriers of these variants had a difference in the level of firing neurons in the brain regions that are responsible for processing emotional information.