Music has a powerful hold on the human psyche. Hearing an old song can trigger waves of nostalgia, while listening to a cheerful tune can instantly lift your spirits. Not surprisingly, music’s ability to captivate human audiences has been the subject of much scientific inquiry. Researchers across the world have made strides in understanding how and why music is able to affect us the way it does.
A simple answer to why we make and listen to music would be because we like it. A neuroimaging study published this year in Nature Neuroscience by the Zatorre lab at McGill University found that listening to music stimulates the release of dopamine, the pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter.
However, the reason why we engage with music appears to run far deeper than mere enjoyment. In 1995, neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp conducted a survey on hundreds of men and women, asking why music was important in their lives. An overwhelming majority of all respondents answered that it was “because it elicits emotions and feelings.” Anecdotally, anyone who has been brought to the brink of tears by a sad melody can attest to the emotional power of music.
Music’s ability to trigger emotions has been explored in a number of studies. A previous experiment by the same McGill group found that the limbic system, a key network for emotions in the brain, is activated by listening to music. They found that when people listened to melodies containing consonant patterns of notes, areas of the limbic system linked with pleasure were stimulated, whereas dissonant melodies caused areas of the limbic system associated with unpleasant emotion to light up. Confirming this neurobiological response, participants in the study described their feelings as respectively positive or negative after listening to the different tunes.
The emotional effect of music has also been investigated at a physiological level. Psychologist Carol Krumhansl at Cornell University measured participants’ physiological responses to hearing songs that expressed various emotions. For instance, a song expressing sadness would have a slow tempo and be written in a minor key. Results from this experiment found that bodily functions associated with emotions — in this case, the slower pulse and decreased body temperature associated with sadness — were induced by the different pieces of music.
Multiple lines of research show that music is able to evoke remarkably similar emotions among groups of different individuals. In an initiative led by neuroscientist Tom Fritz, African ethnic groups with no previous exposure to Western music listened to excerpts of classical piano. The emotions they identified in the music were consistent to those identified by Western listeners.
Another study conducted by Dr. Heaton at the University of London involved playing music for both autistic and non-autistic children. Both groups were able to recognize feelings as complex as triumph and contentment in the music they listened to. In another experiment, Dr. Bresin and others at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden had groups of expert musicians and children alter certain variables in a song, such as tempo and volume, to match an emotion. The tempo of a song to an intended feeling matched in both groups. Therefore, the emotionality laden in music does not seem to lose its effect, regardless of individual variables such as culture, training, age, and disability.
Given music’s role as a universal medium of emotion, the question then becomes — why? What is the explanation behind our universal emotional response to music? Is there any functional significance to this phenomenon?
Multiple theories have addressed this issue. One theory claims that music’s influence over us happened purely by chance. At some point, the response to music serendipitously became associated with brain circuitry intended for other purposes, such as emotion.
Another possibility is that our response to music developed for reproduction. Darwin himself wrote, “It appears probable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females or both sexes, before acquiring the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.” In this light, musical ability and its elicited response could serve as a way for our predecessors to size up potential mates.
Throughout history, no known human society has been without some form of what we would classify as music. Even the anatomy of early hominids suggests that they were capable of musicality. Steven Mithen from the University of Reading hypothesizes that our ancestors used a proto-musical language to communicate. He posits that music’s role as a direct form of emotional communication was integral for social intelligence and evolution. By singing and dancing together, early humans were able to forge social bonds, allowing for greater cooperation, which was needed for adaptation and survival in their environment. The legacy of this evolutionary history is reflected in our emotional sensitivity to music.
There is no clear answer that fully explains the human compulsion to engage with music. Regardless, we are the beneficiaries to a rich and rewarding musical tradition — one to which we are emotionally tied.
