Coined ‘organised sound’ by the French-American composer Edgar Varèse, music can elicit powerful emotions to which any music lover, professional, or casual listener, can attest. It can induce frisson, a sudden wave of emotion which manifests psychologically with feelings of elation, awe, nostalgia or melancholy. The experience also often evokes physiological changes including a rush of dopamine, increased heart rate and respiratory depth, and goosebumps across one’s skin and/or a tingle up the spine, also known as ‘skin orgasm’. Although other artistic experiences can elicit pleasure in this way, music stands out for the consistency with which it does so, especially in cases where music defies the listener’s expectations of what’s coming next. We experience frisson from music four times the rate that we experience it from other stimuli, including literature and visual arts combined. This begs the question of why we find music so rewarding.
The first known evidence of human interest in music comes from Stone Age flutes that were carved from mammoth ivory and wing bones approximately 40,000 years ago. Charles Darwin suggested that the vocal sounds produced by our ancestors were likely more musical than linguistic, intimating that music provided the foundation for the evolution of the human language, not the other way around. This evolutionary theory of music may hold some credibility and could partially explain the intense and universal pleasure we experience from music. Recent research has shown that cells in the auditory cortex of the brain, where sound information first enters, light up exclusively in response to music but not to other sounds. This suggests that our brain has at some point in its development figured out a way to differentiate music over other sounds. Given that the brainstem, the most ancient part of the human brain, activates when processing music, it is quite probable that we learned this millennia ago.
Aside from a potential evolutionary basis, music can be rewarding since it is not dedicated to just one area of the brain. Engaging with music is amongst the most cognitively demanding tasks and fMRI scans back this up demonstrating that multiple areas of the brain illuminate when we listen or play music. This multi-targeted impact means that even if there is a deficit in one area of the brain, for instance due to injury or deterioration, the musical circuitry remains intact in other brain areas. This partially explains why individuals with dementia can often still retain musical memories and recall music despite significant brain deterioration.
Music-based therapeutic interventions are often underappreciated, and yet this multisensory stimulus can invoke more than a frisson – it creates a symphony of neural activations across multiple regions. Neuroimaging studies show that music can positively alter structural, functional and neurochemical features in the brain. For example, taking pleasure in music is closely associated with activity in the brain reward network and can increase grey and white matter density, myelination, synapse formation, neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, all of which help optimise our brain function. Neurochemically, music can reduce cortisol, the stress hormone, and increase endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine – all feel-good hormones involving pleasure and social bonding. Even when individuals were put in a brain scanner and asked to simply imagine music in silence, some of the same brain regions activated – perhaps this was how Beethoven managed to compose symphonies despite his deafness.
Music’s remarkable capacity to transform the brain structurally and chemically makes it a valuable tool for the promotion of health and well-being. It improves emotional states, possibly alleviating or reducing levels of stress, anxiety and depression. In the 18th Century, Bach supposedly composed ‘Golden Variations’ to help relieve a count’s insomnia. Music can enhance cognition via improved attention and memory. One study demonstrated that exposure to classical music while studying and sleeping amplifies short-term memory, particularly in females. In other research, music was particularly instrumental in helping stroke patients’ verbal memory. Music, especially singing in larger groups, has been shown to reduce chronic pain and expedite recovery following stressors. Participating in a music group has the added bonus of increasing one’s feelings of acceptance and tolerance and decreasing stress and arousal levels.
So how can this healing power of music be harnessed in daily life? While not a panacea, music can boost well-being on multiple levels, and because it’s so pervasive, it’s easy to incorporate into our daily routines. It can help us connect better with others and ourselves, establish and maintain healthier routines, improve our motivation to work or study, all the while helping us form new memories and strengthen existing ones.
As music is likely a shared feature of our social brain and thus a binding factor in our social milieu, it can help cultivate and enrich relationships. In practice, this means we can facilitate connections with others by incorporating music into our social activities. You can listen to and enjoy music with friends, take up an instrument, join a gospel choir, attend a musical theatre production, concert, karaoke bar or opera. Getting on the dance floor further intensifies the musical experience intertwining the benefits of both emotional and physical responses.
Music can allow you to connect more to yourself on both cognitive and emotional levels. Cognitively, listening to or playing music, especially new music, delivers a mental challenge which can be helpful as it forces the brain to process unfamiliar sounds and activates areas involved in memory and information processing. On an emotional level, you may find listening or playing music is a worthy pursuit for its own sake that allows you to feel more present. Also, by exposing yourself to an array of music genres, you stimulate a wide range of emotions thus broadening your own spectrum of emotional experiences that you may have perhaps denied yourself or felt you were incapable of before. For example, heavy metal with its aggressive lyrics and reflections on the hardships of life, can be an effective emotional release and a cathartic outlet for processing anger which many, especially marginalised groups, often suppress.
Because music can be a powerful cue linked to specific activities, it can motivate you to establish and maintain healthy routines. For example, you can select songs you know will aid your morning wake-up routine, or you might pop on soothing tunes that calm the nervous system to prepare your body and mind for sleep that your brain will then start to associate with the music. Playing the same motivational songs before or during exercise or sports fixtures can induce excitement and trigger those memories when the song is heard later. You can also add new ones to your playlist that can form new exercise-related memories. If you’re a student or professional you might find background music enhances your focus, or if you’re an artist, inspires you to create. Making up your own melodies to information you need to learn can also be helpful as an effective mnemonic that you’ll long be able to recollect.
Our inherent connection to musical expression is deeply rooted with our identity and experience. Not only can music positively alter our brain structure and chemistry, it can enrich our social interactions and our moments in solitude. It can stimulate emotions and help us access elusive ones. It can also evoke memories of the past and create future memories between music and experiences that continually expand the brain’s musical memory reservoir. Whether your musical taste leans towards the classical pieces of Haydn, Yo-Yo Ma, or Mozart, the rap of Lamar, Drake or Eminem, the jazz of Laufey, Fitzgerald, Holiday, or the rock of Coldplay, Bad Bunny, or Taylor Swift, go ahead and listen to the music. Let the frisson emerge and raise the hairs on your arm. Savour those moments. Though transient, you can find solace in knowing that you can return to this joyful place to deeply feel, to be awed and moved on your own or with the company of others.
