Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. You've got your headphones on, lost in a song, when a particularly powerful chorus or instrumental break sends tingling ripples down your arms and legs. Or maybe the hair on the back of your neck stands on end.
It's a phenomenon that can occur during live or recorded music, new or known, and it's been well documented over the years. But one question persists: Why does it happen?
Researchers have set out to find the answer, and a recent study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience focused on mapping out the brain's electrical activity during musical chills sheds further light on how music can activate the brain's pleasure and reward centers.
Neuroscientists based in France used high-density electroencephalography HD-EEG to illustrate patterns of cerebral activity when people are subjected to pleasurable musical chills. Eighteen volunteers, 11 women and seven men, participated. All reported experiencing chills during enjoyable music prior to the study.
Utilizing HD-EEG, electrodes were placed on a large area of participants' scalps to scan and measure electrical activity in the brain. Once hooked up, each participant listened to five chill-inducing musical excerpts they had provided, as well as three additional neutral excerpts selected by researchers, and were asked to report on their emotional pleasure. They did this by continuously pressing one of four buttons corresponding with the intensity of the experience neutral, low pleasure, high pleasure, chills.
A "chill event" was defined as high emotional pleasure in combination with a physical sensation of goosebumps, tingling sensations, hair standing on end, or shivers down the spine. Old brain circuits essential for survival and implicated in motivated behaviors—such as sex, food, money—are involved, too, in musical pleasure processing. The scans revealed the presence of theta activity, which is associated with memory, reward anticipation, and attention.
These abilities are all key to musical emotional processing. These results coincide with previous MRI and PET scan research and open a new door for understanding our ancestral relationship with music. The findings of this study indicate our enjoyment of music might have once served an evolutionary purpose. Experts have long argued whether music has a biological function. While some consider music a byproduct of human existence, others theorize it gave our species a leg up.
Consider the fact that music is known to prompt the release of oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone" that promotes bonding, in the brain.
The chills hit and dopamine is released. This new study is based EEG readings, which measure electrical activity. The idea was to see if there were changes in the brain's electrical activity that could also underpin a relationship between music and pleasure. Eighteen people were evaluated, eight of whom were amateur musicians. The participants picked five songs ahead of time that they knew often gave them the chills. The scientists also provided the team with three neutral songs to listen to.
Then, the listeners sat back, closed their eyes, and listened to the music through wireless headphones while scientists monitored their brain activity. As they listened, participants got the chills an average of Each chilling moment lasted for 8. When the participants listened to songs that gave them the chills, the team found an increase in theta waves a wave of brain activity that follows regular oscillations in the orbitofrontal cortex.
This area of the brain is associated with emotional processing. The greater the build-up, the greater the chill. But there are competing theories. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, for example, discovered that sad music triggers chills more often than happy music. He argues that a melancholy tune activates an ancient, chill-inducing mechanism—a distress response our ancestors felt when separated from family.
When a ballad makes us feel nostalgic or wistful, that evolutionary design kicks into gear. The experience is overwhelmingly positive.
Recent research shows that sad music actually evokes positive emotions—sadness experienced through art is more pleasant than the sadness you experience from a bad day at the office. And this may hint at another theory. The amygdala, which processes your emotions, responds uniquely to music. For some, listening to a certain track can send shivers down their spine, and goosebumps appear on their skin.
According to a new study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , there's a deeper reason for this than some people simply appreciating music more than others. The researchers studied 20 students, half of which reported experiencing chills when listening to music.
Those who reported chills had a denser volume of brain fibres that connect the sections that process auditory information and emotions. More fibres means you have more efficient processing between the two sections, explained Matthew Sachs, a co-author of the study from the University of Southern California.
He also concluded that those with these stronger connections may feel more intense emotions generally, not just when they are listening to music. When you have intense emotions towards something, adrenaline is released and races through your body. This response is usually triggered when we are scared or feeling threatened, as adrenaline prepares our body to defend itself or run away.
However, strong emotional reactions to other things, such as a passionate scene in a film or listening to your favourite song, can also cause us to have this reaction.
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