Do you ever hear a drum beat , a musical harmony , or a pinch of a guitar twine that makes a pleasant pall run up your spine ? Well , in that display case , you may have a particular brain .
Alissa Der Sarkissian , a enquiry help at the University of Southern California’s(USC ) Brain and Creativity Institute , noticed this unusual feeling when listening to the birdcall “ Nude ” by Radiohead .
“ I sort of experience that my external respiration is going with the strain , my heart is beating slower and I ’m feel just more aware of the song — both the emotion of the song and my body ’s reply to it , ” sheexplained .
As a student at Harvard University , Der Sarkissian investigated this phenomenon with her friend Matthew Sachs , a PhD student at USC . They wanted to see how brain activity dissent between those who get chills in reaction to euphony and those who do n’t .
The research , reported last year in the journalSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , come up that people who get a quiver up their spine have more vulcanized fiber connecting their auditory cerebral cortex to brain areas associated with excited processing . This lets the two region communicate better and means that people who get the iciness experience acute emotions differently from those who do n’t .
“ The theme being that more fibers and increase efficiency between two region intend that you have more effective processing between them,”explainedSachs , who was the lead researcher .
It ’s a particularly weird phenomenon for neuroscientists and psychologist since there ’s no clear evolutionary vantage for appreciate music to this stage . However , the breakthrough could potentially explicate this deep philosophical matter .
“ Together , the present resultant may inform scientific as well as philosophical theories on the evolutionary origins of human aesthetics , specifically of euphony : perhaps one of the reasons why medicine is a cross - culturally essential artifact is that it appeals directly through an auditory channel to excited and societal processing gist of the human brain , ” the authors close in the work .
If you ’re interested in the topic , verify you check out theUSC podcast(below ) on this inquiry and the strange blur between music , emotions , and the brain .
