THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND MUSIC

How Music Gets Your Blood Pumping

Natalie Aikman

Music is something that humans have used and enjoyed for centuries. Music aspires to tell stories to those that choose to listen. Though it presents itself in a plethora of varieties and styles, at its core, music, like any art form, seeks to evoke emotions. The emotions that music seeks to evoke depend on the genre and time period for which it was produced. For example, blues music became popular right after the American Civil War when African Americans in the deep south would get together to speak (or sing) about their hardships (and rightfully so). Music produced by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were thoroughly enjoyed during the American prohibition era when citizens had little vices to turn to in the 1920s. Songs like “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to Be Free)” by Nina Simone and “The Little Light of Mine” by Sam Cooke brought comfort for grieving Americans during the Civil Rights era. In the song “We Are the World”, big artists of all sorts of genres came together to produce the song to raise money to end the South African apartheid in 1985. Following the 9/11 attacks, music was produced by artists of all disciplines to aid grieving Americans in their time of despair. Artists have used their musical influence to attempt to shape the grounds of American politics to unite citizens on political topics—like The Chicks changing their name from “The Dixie Chicks” to bring attention to the discriminatory implication the word carries or Paul McCartney and John Lennon producing the song “Blackbird” as a message of hope following the attacks on the Little Rock Nine. Through all these movements and important time periods, music has provided a momentary escape from reality through evoking emotions during stressful situations. Music can evoke strong emotions for individuals for a variety of reasons. Though subjective to the individual person, music can increase blood flow and cause “chills” for some listeners. Blood and Zatorre (2001) used a PET scan to study the brain structures involved with intensely pleasant emotional responses to music.

Blood and Zatorre (2001) found that there was increased cerebral (brain) blood flow while the chills were more intense in several areas. (Increased blood flow means that the brain region is being activated or used). The left ventral striatum, bilateral insula, the right orbitofrontal cortex, the thalamus, and the anterior cingulate cortex all had increased blood flow to them during the intense chills (that were caused by the student-selected music). What makes these results interesting is when you wonder why these brain regions were activated during a time when there was a strong emotional response to a student’s favorite classical music piece. The ventral striatum (and the orbitofrontal cortex) is activated in the brain when we are deciding if something is rewarding, and it is also involved in love and lust. Interestingly enough, love is more of an emotion-like state and lust is more of a motivational state or primal urge. This may imply that listening to music that gives you chills could produce similar physical responses to when you are lusting over something. The insula is highly involved with the brain’s recognition and response to disgust. The thalamus is the sensory relay station, meaning it processes all incoming sensory information except for smell. It makes sense that the thalamus is involved in the chills because the insula is the sensory relay station and it processes (almost) all information coming through the brain. The Anterior Cingulate Cortex is involved in decision-making and bodily response that are elicited by an emotional response. This makes sense, too, because the study was looking at the parts of the brain that had an increased blood flow when there was a strong emotional response to the music.

Though it is interesting to look at the parts of the brain that were activated during the intense emotional response (the chills), it is neat to also look at the brain regions that decreased in blood flow. (Decreased blood flow means that the brain region is not being activated or used as much). The brain structures that decreased in blood flow (in correlation with the chills) were the right Amygdala, the left Hippocampus, and the Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex. The amygdala’s function has to do with forming associations that deal with emotions. The amygdala is physically close to the hippocampus, where episodic memories are formed. Episodic memories are memories that have specific events or information with them. An example of an episodic memory would be the day you had your first kiss or the day you started college. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) functions during emotional decision-making and intuitive emotional responses. The vmPFC tends to lead us to make deontological decisions, meaning do the least amount of harm. When looking at the brain regions that have less blood flow to them during the chills, it is interesting to think about the function of the brain regions involved (or literally not involved). It is surprising that the amygdala had less activation during an intensely emotional situation because the amygdala, stereotypically, has to do with emotions. The hippocampus not being involved is surprising, too, because it implies that the chills felt while listening to music are not making memories while they are occurring. The vmPFC not being involved is surprising because its function is decision-making and intuitive emotional responses. These results may imply the chills that we feel when listening to music may not be a product of our emotions but rather a logical cognitive process that we have yet to understand from an emotional perspective.

This article is important because it takes us (the scientific community and the general population) one step closer to understanding the neuroscience of listening to music— especially music with intense physical responses like the chills. This article adds to our understanding of brain functions, but it opens up a world of possibilities when furthering neuroscience research in relation to music. Participants’ heart rate, EMG, and RESP all increased significantly (enough to matter mathematically) during the peak of the chills when participants were listening to their chosen music. EMG stands for electromyography and it looks at the electrical activity in your body. RESP stands for respiration depth and that is looking at how deep or shallow someone breathes—a higher RESP would mean that someone is breathing more deeply and a lower RESP would mean that someone is not breathing as deeply. This is noteworthy because it means when someone has a strong emotional reaction (chills) to music, their breathing increases in depth (they are breathing deeper), their heart rate increases (blood is pumping around the body more), and the electrical signals around their body are firing more. Taking this a step further, there were not any significant changes in skin temperature measurement. This means that there was increased blood flow to the body but not enough to make the skin’s temperature change enough to matter mathematically. During the experiment, the participants rated the pleasantness and the emotional intensity of the music they chose that evoked chills in them.

The ratings of emotional intensity and pleasantness tended to be higher than the ratings of the intensity of the chills which implies that the chills cannot be experienced until a certain level of pleasantness and emotional intensity were met.

Ithink this topic is important for the general public to know about because most people listen to music in one way or another. Music presents itself in lots of ways from birds chirping outside to advertisements on streaming platforms or television. Though there is solid research concerning how people fall subject to advertisements, I think it would be interesting to look at pictures of the brain during advertisements involving music to see how we react to the video neurologically (in the brain). This article leaves me with several questions and a bunch of directions research could go to further understand the neuroscience of music. My first question is why the insula had increased blood flow while participants experienced the chills when the insula has to do with disgust and how we process it. The insula activation does not make sense to me because the insula is activated when we think about disgust. Oftentimes, anecdotally, when I am disgusted I will get chills similar to the ones I experience when I listen to music. My question is, are the chills I experience when I am disgusted the same chills that I experience when I listen to music? Is that why the insula is activated? My next question is what causes the chills? Is it the chords of the music? Are the chills caused by the words reminding us of intense emotions? There is a lack of reasoning for what particularly causes these chills and I think there could be interesting studies done that look at the specific components of music that cause the body chills. Lastly, several researchers have attempted to study the music and social bonding hypothesis (MSB) but none of them have looked at neuroimaging when studying the responses to music. The music and social bonding hypothesis is the theory that music has evolved as a system for humans to experience higher social bonding—since humans are social creatures. There seems to be a gap between the implications of the music and social bonding hypothesis and the neuroimaging research for how they relate to each other.

References

Blood, A.J., & Zatorre, R.J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. PNAS, 98(20), 11818-11823. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.191355898.