Cry and dance: Why music makes us emotion
Last summer, we already figured out why there are goosebumps from music . In this article we will tell you what scientists have achieved, trying to explain why music causes us emotions.
/ Photo by Broo_am (Andy B) / CC
Quora user, musician and composer Ian Atkin explains that music involves those areas of the brain that are responsible for movement, planning, attention and memory. This turned out to be a result of a study that Daniel Abrams conducted while writing a doctoral dissertation at the School of Medicine at Stanford University.
The participants in the experiment, people without music education, listened to four symphonies of William Beuys while they were doing MRI of the brain. As a result of this study, it turned out that music influenced all its participants almost equally.
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Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin wrote the book “This is your brain on music,” in which he concluded that music is responsible for establishing social connections and improving physical fitness. He also says that music is the only force that can make you join the raging twenty thousandth crowd, and nothing else is capable of it.
Studies have also shown that certain music can help with language learning. This, in turn, indicates that there is a connection between melody and memory. Music is fun and often associated with pleasant moments: parties, socializing, friendship and relaxation. Some studies draw a parallel between the sensations of music and narcotic intoxication.
Levitin also explained: “Listening to music changes the chemistry of the brain. And we know that people use music in the same way as drugs. At the end of the day, you come home, turn on music that will relax you and improve your mood. What some call heavy metal, others will call light classical rock. But when there is suitable music, it will always set you up in a good way - or in a bad way, if you wish. ”
It was also found that listening to soothing music raises the level of serotonin and oxytocin in the body. It is likely that neuroreceptors that are susceptible to other hormones are also activated. The right music can not only make you happy, but, for example, bring a person to an excited state.
Other quora users are of the opinion that music may not just affect our mood. It reflects the emotions and feelings that we experienced before and which are associated in our perception with a particular melody. This is music from the past or music associated with a specific event or person.
No doubt, memory plays a major role here, which plays a decisive role in creating and linking memories, collecting everything related to events, relationships, past and current moments, everything that happened in the past or present, and associates this with certain music. Different performers are associated with good or bad events, with sadness or fun.
Children at an early age begin to react to songs from TV commercials or music screensavers for children's programs. With age, nothing changes. We also associate things with music, each in its own way. In the scientific world, this issue deals with musical psychology.
Music has been driven by people of different cultures for many millennia. Dr. Valorie Salempoor and other neuroscientists are trying to figure out using brain scans why music, which has no great “practical” value from the point of view of evolution, has such a profound effect on us.
Earlier, researchers from Stanford reported that when listening to classical music, different people activate the same areas of the brain, which presumably means getting some universal experience. However, the experience gained is not the same for everyone. The group Salimpur found out that when a person listens to a song for the first time, the strength of some nervous connections can show how much a person likes this music. This phenomenon is based on past experience, on the music that you liked earlier.
After several years of research, Salimpur conducted a brain scan of a new type, during which the research participants listened to music that gives them goosebumps or "body chill." During the test, researchers monitored the level of dopamine (a neurotransmitter and a hormone responsible for motivation and reward) in the bodies of the experiment participants. Using a technique called positron emission tomography (PET), it turned out that 15 minutes after listening to their favorite music, the subjects' brain was literally “filled” with dopamine.
The system of dopamine production is old in terms of evolution - animals are just as susceptible to its amount in the body as humans are. “But animals do not enjoy music,” says Salimpur, “so there must be something else here.”
In a new study, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track brain activity in real time. Participants were invited to listen to the first 30 seconds of sixty unfamiliar songs. In order to evaluate how much they liked the song, the subjects were offered to buy the full version of the song for their own money using an application that resembles iTunes. The program is built on the principle of an auction with bids, so that participants could offer from 0 to 2 dollars per song.
The subject's brain area, which is called the “pleasure center,” was scanned. It turns out that the connection between this area and a number of other parts of the brain can predict how much money an experiment participant is willing to spend on a particular song. The area includes the amygdala involved in the processing of emotions, the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory, as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in the decision-making process.
So why is one person willing to pay $ 2 for a song, while the other will miss the same track? Salimpur says the choice is based on past musical experience. “No matter what genres you like, eastern, western, jazz, heavy metal, pop, they all follow their own rules and laws, and they are all recorded on your subcortex,” she says. “Whether you realize it or not, but every time you listen to music, the patterns inherent in your brain are activated”.
Using these templates, the "pleasure center" acts like a computer, she says. He predicts the reward you get from listening to music, based on similar tunes you've heard in the past. So, if you like the music more than the “pleasure center” predicted, you feel good. If it is less, it becomes boring and you are disappointed.
Researchers found that music has a strong effect on facial expressions. For example, funny music makes happy faces even more contented, while sad music adds melancholy to people. Thus, musical emotions are “cross-modal”, that is, they are easily transferred from the sensory system to others.
All these studies show that music makes you feel specific emotions, but it is still not clear why. Why such emotions do not cause human speech or animal cries? Why does everyone enjoy listening to music?
Forget the message that the lyrics of sad love songs convey. The transfer of emotions contribute not only (and not so much) poetry, but also differences in melody and tempo. But is there really something in the music that “gets into our brain” and causes specific emotions? Or is it just the consonance of musical instruments, which later becomes part of our culture?
On the YouTube channel It's ok to be smart Joe Hanson (Joe Hanson) and Mike Ragnetta (Mike Rugnetta) from the PBS Idea channel said that the same types of melody cause similar feelings even through cultural barriers.
Does this mean that we are able to grasp the meaning of the song without knowing the language? Hardly. However, this feeling of community among different people who like the same melody is clearly more than socialization. And since there are no less among scholars of music lovers than among representatives of other professions, we should expect new interesting studies at the intersection of musical theory, physiology and psychology.
PS Last week we began a series of publications, in which we will examine the most frequently asked questions and myths from the field of audio. As a starting point, we use the most interesting moments that listeners of our “ Sound ” audio program pay attention to in our reviews and stories about our own audio systems:
/ Photo by Broo_am (Andy B) / CC
Quora user, musician and composer Ian Atkin explains that music involves those areas of the brain that are responsible for movement, planning, attention and memory. This turned out to be a result of a study that Daniel Abrams conducted while writing a doctoral dissertation at the School of Medicine at Stanford University.
The participants in the experiment, people without music education, listened to four symphonies of William Beuys while they were doing MRI of the brain. As a result of this study, it turned out that music influenced all its participants almost equally.
')
Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin wrote the book “This is your brain on music,” in which he concluded that music is responsible for establishing social connections and improving physical fitness. He also says that music is the only force that can make you join the raging twenty thousandth crowd, and nothing else is capable of it.
Studies have also shown that certain music can help with language learning. This, in turn, indicates that there is a connection between melody and memory. Music is fun and often associated with pleasant moments: parties, socializing, friendship and relaxation. Some studies draw a parallel between the sensations of music and narcotic intoxication.
Levitin also explained: “Listening to music changes the chemistry of the brain. And we know that people use music in the same way as drugs. At the end of the day, you come home, turn on music that will relax you and improve your mood. What some call heavy metal, others will call light classical rock. But when there is suitable music, it will always set you up in a good way - or in a bad way, if you wish. ”
It was also found that listening to soothing music raises the level of serotonin and oxytocin in the body. It is likely that neuroreceptors that are susceptible to other hormones are also activated. The right music can not only make you happy, but, for example, bring a person to an excited state.
Other quora users are of the opinion that music may not just affect our mood. It reflects the emotions and feelings that we experienced before and which are associated in our perception with a particular melody. This is music from the past or music associated with a specific event or person.
No doubt, memory plays a major role here, which plays a decisive role in creating and linking memories, collecting everything related to events, relationships, past and current moments, everything that happened in the past or present, and associates this with certain music. Different performers are associated with good or bad events, with sadness or fun.
Children at an early age begin to react to songs from TV commercials or music screensavers for children's programs. With age, nothing changes. We also associate things with music, each in its own way. In the scientific world, this issue deals with musical psychology.
Why is music so good
Music has been driven by people of different cultures for many millennia. Dr. Valorie Salempoor and other neuroscientists are trying to figure out using brain scans why music, which has no great “practical” value from the point of view of evolution, has such a profound effect on us.
Earlier, researchers from Stanford reported that when listening to classical music, different people activate the same areas of the brain, which presumably means getting some universal experience. However, the experience gained is not the same for everyone. The group Salimpur found out that when a person listens to a song for the first time, the strength of some nervous connections can show how much a person likes this music. This phenomenon is based on past experience, on the music that you liked earlier.
After several years of research, Salimpur conducted a brain scan of a new type, during which the research participants listened to music that gives them goosebumps or "body chill." During the test, researchers monitored the level of dopamine (a neurotransmitter and a hormone responsible for motivation and reward) in the bodies of the experiment participants. Using a technique called positron emission tomography (PET), it turned out that 15 minutes after listening to their favorite music, the subjects' brain was literally “filled” with dopamine.
The system of dopamine production is old in terms of evolution - animals are just as susceptible to its amount in the body as humans are. “But animals do not enjoy music,” says Salimpur, “so there must be something else here.”
In a new study, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track brain activity in real time. Participants were invited to listen to the first 30 seconds of sixty unfamiliar songs. In order to evaluate how much they liked the song, the subjects were offered to buy the full version of the song for their own money using an application that resembles iTunes. The program is built on the principle of an auction with bids, so that participants could offer from 0 to 2 dollars per song.
The subject's brain area, which is called the “pleasure center,” was scanned. It turns out that the connection between this area and a number of other parts of the brain can predict how much money an experiment participant is willing to spend on a particular song. The area includes the amygdala involved in the processing of emotions, the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory, as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in the decision-making process.
So why is one person willing to pay $ 2 for a song, while the other will miss the same track? Salimpur says the choice is based on past musical experience. “No matter what genres you like, eastern, western, jazz, heavy metal, pop, they all follow their own rules and laws, and they are all recorded on your subcortex,” she says. “Whether you realize it or not, but every time you listen to music, the patterns inherent in your brain are activated”.
Using these templates, the "pleasure center" acts like a computer, she says. He predicts the reward you get from listening to music, based on similar tunes you've heard in the past. So, if you like the music more than the “pleasure center” predicted, you feel good. If it is less, it becomes boring and you are disappointed.
Everything is interconnected
Researchers found that music has a strong effect on facial expressions. For example, funny music makes happy faces even more contented, while sad music adds melancholy to people. Thus, musical emotions are “cross-modal”, that is, they are easily transferred from the sensory system to others.
All these studies show that music makes you feel specific emotions, but it is still not clear why. Why such emotions do not cause human speech or animal cries? Why does everyone enjoy listening to music?
Forget the message that the lyrics of sad love songs convey. The transfer of emotions contribute not only (and not so much) poetry, but also differences in melody and tempo. But is there really something in the music that “gets into our brain” and causes specific emotions? Or is it just the consonance of musical instruments, which later becomes part of our culture?
On the YouTube channel It's ok to be smart Joe Hanson (Joe Hanson) and Mike Ragnetta (Mike Rugnetta) from the PBS Idea channel said that the same types of melody cause similar feelings even through cultural barriers.
Does this mean that we are able to grasp the meaning of the song without knowing the language? Hardly. However, this feeling of community among different people who like the same melody is clearly more than socialization. And since there are no less among scholars of music lovers than among representatives of other professions, we should expect new interesting studies at the intersection of musical theory, physiology and psychology.
PS Last week we began a series of publications, in which we will examine the most frequently asked questions and myths from the field of audio. As a starting point, we use the most interesting moments that listeners of our “ Sound ” audio program pay attention to in our reviews and stories about our own audio systems:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/398949/
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