94 Stefan Koelsch conveying meaning information”), and the processes underlying the emergence of meaning due to the interpretation of musical information by an individual. The former deals with music and its meaning as an object (and with questions such as “does music have meaning?”, “which types of meaning can music convey?”, “what are the differences between music and language with regard to meaning?”), the lat-ter deals with the subjective processes related to the interpretation of musical in-formation (and the interpretation of psychological and physiological effects of mu-sic perception) that give rise to meaning. Such a distinction is important because on the one hand a musical system can be used to convey speci c meaning information, and on the other musical information may evoke meaningful associations in a receiver although this speci c meaning was not intended to be conveyed by the producer. One example for the latter phenomen-on is a speci c personal memory brought to mind in an individual by speci c mu-sical information. I propose a new conceptualization of musical meaning, along with a neurobiological theory of musical meaning, that considers both sides: Music as a system to convey meaning information, and the psychological reality that mu-sical information means something for an individual. Note that the term meaning is not used here to refer only to (directional) relations between two things (a sign and a referent), and – even when dealing with the reference of a sign to a referent – the term meaning is not used here to refer only to the conscious intentional use of a sign to refer to a referent. For example, when listening today to music from J. S. Bach, the concept “baroque” might be evoked in a listener, although Bach himself could not have intended to convey such a concept (because it was not used in his time for his music).In the following sections, seven categories (or dimensions) of musical meaning will be described, divided into three classes of musical meaning: extra-musical, in-tra-musical, and musicogenic meaning (see Table 1). Extra-musical meaning can emerge from the act of referencing a musical sign to an (extra-musical) referent by virtue of three different types of sign quality (iconic, indexical, and symbolic). Be-yond conceptual extra-musical meaning, I will propose two classes of non-conceptual meaning (and, notably, meaning beyond a single sign). One of these two classes is in-tra-musical meaning, which emerges from the act of referencing a structural musical element to another structural musical element. The other of these two classes is mu-sicogenic meaning, which emerges from physical processes (such as actions), emo-tions, and personality-related responses (including preferences) evoked by music. That is, in contrast to how the term meaning is used in linguistics, the term meaning as it is used here is not con ned to conceptual meaning, and can thus also refer to non-conceptual meaning. To illustrate this: An individual with a receptive (Wer-nicke’s) aphasia does not understand the conceptual meaning of words anymore. Yet, pain, or encountering a loved person, has meaning for this individual.The dimensions of musical meaning are abstractions of musical meaning, and it is important to consider that interpreting and understanding music with regard to its meaning (as well as interpreting and understanding meaning information com-