Music profoundly affects us, which scientists have known for years. They are now beginning to discover the answers. They are using fMRI technology to discover why music can evoke strong emotions and bind us to others.
Valorie Salimpoor is a McGill University neuroscientist who studies music and how it affects the brain. A single sound tone isn’t pleasurable, but if arranged over time in some arrangement, it can be incredibly powerful.
Music makes the brain happy.
It’s amazing! She and her colleagues connected participants to an fMRI machine and recorded brain activity while they listened to their favorite music. Dopamine was released from the nucleus-accumbens, a deep structure in our older brain.
Salimpoor says, “That’s huge because dopamine can be released with biological rewards like eating and sexual pleasures.” It’s also released with powerful, addictive drugs like cocaine and amphetamines.
The caudate nucleus is another brain part that produces dopamine. It’s located just before the peak emotions in a song. This is where you experience the anticipation of pleasure. The expectation of happiness is based on familiarity with the music. Your brain has a memory of songs you have enjoyed in the past, so you can anticipate the high points. This combination of pleasure and anticipation is powerful, suggesting that we are biologically driven to listen to music that we enjoy.
What happens to our brains when we love something we haven’t heard before? Salimpoor connected people again to fMRI machines to find out. This time, she made participants listen to unfamiliar music and gave them money to purchase any music they wanted.
She discovered from brain scans that participants release dopamine when they enjoy a song enough to purchase it. She also found a more significant interaction between the nucleus and the higher-level cortical brain structures involved in pattern recognition, musical memories, and emotional processing.
Her findings suggested that people’s brains can process unfamiliar music through memory circuits. They search for patterns in the sounds to predict where it is going. People will only enjoy familiar music. This means they will not like it. People will be more likely to enjoy the song’s emotional highs if it has some standard features, such as a familiar beat or melody. You can confirm or challenge their predictions in exciting ways to get dopamine highs.
She describes it as “a roller coaster ride” where you can predict what will happen but still enjoy the surprise and be surprised.
Salimpoor believes that this combination of anticipation, intense emotional release, and love for music may be why people have so many tastes. One’s musical taste is influenced by the number of musical sounds and patterns one has heard over the course of their life. Pop songs have a predictable melodic structure and rhythm that is easy to follow, even if the song is unfamiliar. With its complex melodies and rhythms, jazz is more of an acquired taste. Pop music can be too predictable, and people tire of it more quickly than jazz.
These findings help explain why we can listen to the same song over and again and still love it. A familiar piece of music can trigger an emotional response that is so strong it can be re-stimulated years later.
Salimpoor says, “If you asked me to tell me about a high school memory, you would be able to tell me a story.” “But, if I asked you to listen to some music from high school, then you would feel the emotions.”
How music syncs brains
According to Ed Large, a University of Connecticut music psychologist, music can trigger powerful emotions. His research examines how music’s dynamics, such as slowing down, speeding it up, or softening or louder sounds in a piece, resonate in the brain. This affects one’s enjoyment of music and emotional response.
Large and his colleagues conducted one study where they had the participants listen to two versions of a Chopin piece. Version one was the standard version, which featured dynamic variations. Version two was the mechanical version, which did not include these variations. The participants listened to both versions while connected to an fMRI machine. Their pleasure centers lit up in emotional moments of version one song but not in version 2. The song lost its emotional resonance as it lost its dynamics. Even though the melody was the same, it was almost like the song had lost its emotional resonance.
Large says that “in fact, when the experiment was finished, they didn’t even know we were playing the exact same piece of music.”
Large observed activity in the listener’s mirror neurons when Large played the dynamic version. These neurons are responsible for our ability to perceive what we see externally. Mirror neurons were firing slower at slower tempos and faster at faster speeds. This suggests that they may be involved in processing musical dynamics and how we perceive music.
Large says that music can have a direct effect on your brain rhythms. Brain rhythms are responsible for how you feel at any moment.
He says that music can cause people to experience a shared emotion when they hear it together, such as in concert halls. Music functions in the same way as language, using sound and dynamic variations to convey a certain understanding to the listener.
Large says, “If I’m a performer, and you’re listening, and the music I play moves you,” Large adds. That’s how I communicate with you.
Different notes for different folks
Large’s theories are supported by other music research. In one study, neuroscientists presented different types of songs to people and tracked brain activity. Music has a profound effect on the brain’s many areas. However, they found that each kind of music had its patterns. For example, uptempo songs create one design, while slower songs create another. Lyrical themes make another. Even though people didn’t enjoy the songs or had little musical knowledge, their brains looked very similar to those who did.
If our brains synch when we hear the same fundamental dynamics in music, why doesn’t everyone respond the same way?
Salimpoor and Large believe that the difference in preferences is due to how our neurons are wired together. This is, in turn, based on our personal, individual history of listening to or performing music. He says that rhythm is all about predictability. Our predictions about music begin to form at an early age. He cites Erin Hannon’s work at the University of Nevada, who discovered that babies as young as 8 months old could tune in to the music of their cultural environment.
Large says that while activity in the nucleus and accumbens can signal emotional pleasure, it does not explain it. Learning does. Musicians often exposed to more complex musical patterns over time tend to have more musical tastes and be more open to new musical traditions than non-musicians. He also said that social contexts could impact your emotional reactions.
He says that liking is subjective. Although music may sound different to you than it does to others, you can associate it with something that you enjoy, and you will feel a pleasure response.
This may be why I love Solsbury Hill so much. Its unusual rhythm intrigues me. As a musician, it still makes me want to count it out from the time I hear it. But it also reminds me of where it was when it first came out: sitting next to a guy I had a crush on in college. My anticipatory pleasure centers were firing for many reasons.
The song can continue to give that sweet, emotional release because the pleasure pathways have been deeply embedded in my brain.