MefeW

I don't know the answer myself, but coincidentally I'm reading a fascinating book about this exact topic. It's called This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin. The book tries to answer questions like "What is music", "Where does it come from", "Why do certain sequences of sound make us feel emotional and others just bother us, like a car honk or a dog bark". The author is a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, and before that he worked in the music industry for many years as a musician, sound engineer and music producer, which is cool because he provides a mix of experience from both worlds. The book is very scientific, which seems to be what you seek, listing all the scientific sources used in each chapter for example, and is a very good read, I'm having a lot of fun. I'm very early on, so I can't really tell you for sure if it serves to answer your queries, sorry for that, but I think you should definitely look into it. It might be a little much about music theory in the beginning, but you can probably skip that part if you want. Cheers