When mice meet Beethoven: How early sound shapes the brain differently for males and females

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals that male and female mice develop distinct sound preferences depending on their early auditory environment. When exposed as pups to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 or to silence, male, but not female, mice showed strong, lasting behavioral changes. In parallel, neural activity in auditory cortex, a major hub of auditory processing in the brain, was correlated with music preference in female, but not in male, mice. The findings highlight sex-dependent differences in how early sound exposure shapes brain activity and emotional preferences later in life.

When Kamini Sehrawat and Prof. Israel Nelken of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem exposed baby mice to the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, they weren’t simply setting a mood. They were probing one of neuroscience’s most intriguing questions: how early experiences sculpt our sensory preferences, and whether those effects differ by sex.

Their study, published in Cell Reports, reveals a striking finding: male and female mice are shaped differently by the same experiences. Early exposure to sound or even to silence left lasting marks not just on the animals’ behavior but also on how their brains processed sound. Yet those effects diverged between sexes.

Male mice avoided novel sound environments: those exposed to silence, or to a set of artificial sounds, strongly avoided music as adults, while those that grew up hearing Beethoven showed more varied preferences, with a fair number gravitating toward music. Female mice, in contrast, seemed less swayed by early sonic experience, showing varied preferences. Remarkably, in females, stronger neural activity in auditory cortex was linked to less liking for music, while in males, the connection between auditory cortex response and behavior was weak or absent.

“These results suggest that early sound exposure affects males and females in fundamentally different ways,” says Kamini Sehrawat, who led the experiments. “What looks like the same experience at the surface may trigger completely different neural adaptations in each sex.”

Prof. Israel Nelken adds, “Our findings in mice intriguingly suggest that sound preferences rely on mechanisms that operate differently in males and females. Understanding those differences could shed light on how early sensory experiences shape emotional and cognitive development.”

For Nelken’s team, Beethoven was simply a tool, a structured, multi-frequency soundscape engaging much of the mouse hearing range. But their results hit a note that resonates beyond the laboratory: the same melody may strike different chords depending on who’s listening.