Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner A new "your brain on music" type of study

Some folks here may find this recently published study interesting. In it, the researchers report on an experiment they did that gave some results showing that the brain processes music using the same pathways as it does for processing the pleasures of foods, drugs, and sex.

Something about the design of the study struck me as particularly interesting, and also somewhat peculiar. As part of the setup, they asked participants to choose music that gave them "chills". That seems a bit strange to me just because that's not normally a specific effect I get from music I like a lot. I guess there are a few pieces that can do it, mostly some big orchestral moments, but it's not really a huge motivation for listening. How about you - do you get chills from favorite pieces, and is that the reason why you like them?

Participants were asked to bring to the laboratory two music recordings that reliably produced intense feelings of pleasure for them, including but not limited to the sensation of chills.

I read the article but have insufficient knowledge of chemistry to derive any insight.

I know what you mean - I wish studies would include a non-technical summary for the general public, as a matter of course.

I know what you mean - I wish studies would include a non-technical summary for the general public, as a matter of course.

Anyway, I found this press release from the university where it took place. It gives a bit of an idea of the study in more everyday language. There are various other write-ups in other places that I noticed when searching, but I didn't check them out.

I don't, because such summaries would mostly be impossible to write without compromising the results. Media does this already enough imo. The results are only relevant in the context and the technical details are usually a non-separable part of that context. Research reports are written for other scientists and usually practical applications that could actually be useful in wider context are still far in the future.

Well, yes. I knew when I was writing that many, probably most, studies are simply not reducible into that sort of summary, and I should have qualified what I wrote to say as much. Something along the lines of "for those studies that aren't too esoteric to even describe to non-specialists, and/or those that will likely be of interest to people outside of the scientific community".

I think this particular study is one that appears to be not so incomprehensible to non-specialists that it can't be reasonably described in non-technical language, even if not in great detail. And some of that came through in the press release, as well being found in various sentences in the study itself. Otherwise, I wouldn't have understood enough of it to even contemplate starting a thread about it.

Also, it is interesting that one of the authors of the study, Daniel Levitin, is the guy who wrote the best-seller "This Is Your Brain On Music". So he already has experience with translating technical material into writing for general consumption. The way I became aware of this study was from a newspaper article which wasn't all that well written. I strongly suspect that a non-technical overview from Levitin or one of the other authors would have been a better way to get the information.

I do get chills from music. Quite literally sometimes as my arm hair stand up