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is there a scientific reason for this?

Lady_AlisonLady_Alison Veteran
edited March 2012 in Arts & Writings
Okay, so everytime I hear certain songs or musical compositions I get a strange physical response.

I feel shivers in my extremities and scalp goosebumps as well on my arms.

Why do you guys think this happens?

Here is an example...

Comments

  • BonsaiDougBonsaiDoug Simply, on the path. Veteran
    No explanation, but Sarah Brightman always gives me the chills when I hear her sing. No one did "Christine" in Phantom better than her.
  • Lady_AlisonLady_Alison Veteran
    I'm wondering if the human body and mind is innately programed for this...I've heard of the importance of math in musical composition...idk just a little brain fart.
  • Lady_AlisonLady_Alison Veteran
    @bonsaidoug

  • BonsaiDougBonsaiDoug Simply, on the path. Veteran
    OK - found this:

    "Canadian researchers have suggested that when we are moved by music our brains behave as if reacting to delicious food, psychoactive drugs, or money. According to Caribbean Sociologist, Corey Alexander Lane, "The reaction from music is based on the memory induced emotion that some songs create."

    The pleasure experience is driven by the chemical dopamine, which has been linked to addiction. It produces physical effects known as "chills" that cause changes in the skin's electrical conductance, heart rate, breathing and temperature. The responses correlate with the degree to which people rate the "pleasurability" of music.

    The new research has shown that dopamine release was greatest when listeners had a strong emotional response to music. "If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued,” wrote the scientists."
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    edited March 2012
    I think it's kind of like how it's hard to make a Buddhist video game. Science can explain the effect of music. But if one were to make a song about the body there would have to be a set of words different area accessed than scientific terms. And my point is that built into science is sometimes a tone of limiting the thought space to a model. Kind of like when some people have their blood pressure tested they can get 'white coat' high blood pressure due to the setting of the situation.

    I think the dopamine model is a sort of insight into how music affects you but I think it reduces the complexity of the brain a little bit down to just a model of addiction. 'Dopamine' is very abstract. We might think that every delight we have is 'just dopamine'. But there are so many connections of neurons for example merely in the brain and it is more than just dopamine gumballs dropping through.

    But I know that what I said may be obvious.

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    sometimes, too much analysis kills the magical wonder of things.

    why do we have to have an answer to everything?
    why can't we just 'be in the moment' - and let it be? :rant:

    I try to avoid threads with questions like these because - I don't care.
    I don't need to know.
    All i want, is to be permitted to enjoy the sensations different experences bring, without knowing about dopamine, endorphins, neurons and the rest of it....
    I give a damn.
    I love the music.

    who cares why!? :grumble:
  • ToshTosh Veteran
    I remember seeing a documentary where chimps were in a jungle all 'chanting' together in sync. This was (if I remember correctly) a way for that tribe of chimps to say, "This is our territory".

    The documentary suggested that singing evolved from this type of behaviour.
  • genkakugenkaku Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran

    I vote with @federica. That anyone delights or despairs is important. Why is not so important.

    But maybe it's just an age thing and 'why' is a young (wo)man's pastime. As a Buddhist chum of mine once observed, "There are no answers to 'why' questions."
  • CinorjerCinorjer Veteran
    I once heard a radio program where a researcher went to Africa and looked for the basis of music and language. She talked about the high pitched "ululating" or trilling that women there use to call their children in from wherever they've wandered off to in the bush. She played a recording of the mothers calling out in this way, and it felt like ice water was poured into my brain, the recognition was that strong. I do believe we are hard wired for certain sounds.

    She said the sound is also made for both grief and joyous occasions, but that the women are reluctant to do it just to have it recorded. I didn't find many examples on youtube, even.
  • ihepfihepf
    @federica and @genkaku:

    why? because its fun to ask and fun to find out. thats a magical experience in itself. it only kills the magical wonder of things if you let it :p.

    I have found an article in german that says more or less the same as that what BonsaiDoug wrote. One thing they say is that there is no music piece that effects everyone the same way. Its an individual thing where the music is coupled to memorys.

    This gives me goosebumps:





  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    @federica and @genkaku:

    why? because its fun to ask and fun to find out. thats a magical experience in itself. it only kills the magical wonder of things if you let it :p.
    I completely disagree...
    whenever you find out the 'why' even if it's accidental, and you weren't even concerned with the 'why'... there is a substrata of disappointment... part of the magic was NOT knowing the why....

    but it's a sickness of the Western mind - the need to know - because we're a cynical bunch, geared to mistrusting...

    In the East, when for example, you speak to people about Feng Shui and Chi, they'll nod and understand, and if you ask why such-and-such might work, they shrug, and just smile, and say, "well, Yin Yang, Chi... you know...."

    Here in the west, rather than suspend cynicism and delight in the fact something flows so beautifully - we insist of stripping it down to its bare bones, dissecting it, examining and scrutinising it, until it lies there, exhausted with nothing left to give...

    And if there is still no reason to justify our curiosity - we then declare it a falsehood, an impossibility, something that clearly cannot 'be' because we are deprived of seeing the internal how and why....if we don't understand it, it can't be true.

    I remember someone once saying, "A little respect, a little reverence, for the things you cannot see...."

    Really, our lives would be much simpler, in a lot of ways, if we had more reverence, and less curiosity.

    which killed the cat, as i recall.


  • CinorjerCinorjer Veteran
    But curiosity is one of our defining instincts and a big part of being human. What does the land look like, over the horizon? What is there on the other side of that ocean? What is on the bottom of the ocean, for that matter? What are those lights in the night sky, really? What are, and what happens if, and why not, and a few hundred thousand years later, I'm talking to you over a network that spans the world.

    And, why do people suffer, anyway? Buddha wouldn't accept "that's the way it is" or "because the Gods demand it" or even "because we earned bad karma from a past life". We have to start with a question, before we can find an answer.

    But I do understand that we also should fill the human need to just stand in silence and admire the beauty of life.
  • ihepfihepf
    @federica and @genkaku:

    why? because its fun to ask and fun to find out. thats a magical experience in itself. it only kills the magical wonder of things if you let it :p.
    I completely disagree...
    With what do you disagree? What i described above is my experience. It IS fun (at least for me) to ask and find things out. Finding things out can give you goosebumps like the OP described it.
    Really, our lives would be much simpler, in a lot of ways, if we had more reverence, and less curiosity.
    Yes, because we probably would be still living in caves ;).
    but it's a sickness of the Western mind - the need to know - because we're a cynical bunch, geared to mistrusting...
    Its not a sickness of the western mind. Science developed not in the west but everywhere in the world.
    Here in the west, rather than suspend cynicism and delight in the fact something flows so beautifully - we insist of stripping it down to its bare bones, dissecting it, examining and scrutinising it, until it lies there, exhausted with nothing left to give...
    Sorry that i post a video as a response but he just words it so much better then i could:



    By the way:

    This curiosity gave us the possibility to discuss things like this on this forum, because from it all the technology developed.



  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    we'll just have to agree to disagree.
  • ZeroZero Veteran
    Dopamine is just one of the physical symptoms of the response - no one is sure why and how - there appears to be some relationship between interpreting sound and emotional response - the precise nature of that relationship is a mystery however.

    @lady_alison - there is stuff out there on 'whirling dirvishes', cyclic movement and sound that fit in quite well to Sufi systems and offer one form of explanation.
  • DandelionDandelion London Veteran
    This is one of my goosebump songs:

    It got me through my teenage years :D

    I don't see anything wrong with wondering 'why', I guess it's a personal preference whether or not you wonder, it's fine to wonder, and it's fine not to I.M.O.
  • DandelionDandelion London Veteran
    The drummer from U2 also gives me goosebumps :)
    http://www.clevelandleader.com/files/larrymullenjr.jpg
  • Lady_AlisonLady_Alison Veteran
    I'm just happy it's one of those strange phenomenon that sort of join us because so many people have had this experience.

    I seem to recall federica posting some classical music that made her heart soar. It was on one of Jeffrey's posts.
  • DandelionDandelion London Veteran
    It's funny, an awful lot of classical music makes me feel incredibly anxious. I have to turn it off. It does something very unpleasant to my state of mind, I can't quite explain it. I'm probably on my own with that one, does anyone else have the same negative experience with classical music?
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    no, but some of the more modern stuff turned out by the unintelligible pop culture currently in fashion, lterally makes me ill.
    And it's a real medical issue.
    Many here know i have severe tinnitus, and it now seems that has compounded a problem my father also used to suffer from:

    Hyperacusis.

    http://www.deafnessresearch.org.uk/factsheets/hyperacusis.pdf

    maybe you're the same way with classical music. it's worth exploring....
    It may not be the particular variety of music, it may be the levels and type of sounds....
  • DandelionDandelion London Veteran
    Thanks @federica that factsheet is very interesting. I had never heard of hyperacusis before, I don't know if that is what I have, or if it's just a personality thing! The best example I can give is the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey - I don't know what happened but I had to turn the damn film off because of the music, it totally freaked me out and made me feel like I was a nervous wreak, literally. Complete anxiety. Weird. My father also had severe tinnitus and very bad hearing. My husband thinks I've got bad hearing. I struggle to differentiate the dialogue in a film from the soundtrack or other noises in a film from each other... so I insist on only watching the t.v. with the subtitles on. It's less annoying for everyone than me saying 'what did he just say' every two minutes lol!

    Can the doctor's do anything for tinnitus these days? I hope they soon will be able to, even if currently they can't. I've had it every now and then, but not severe, but I imagine it would be quite upsetting to have it severely.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    1: certainly get a hearing check. it does sound (sorry, no pun intended) as if you do have a hearing problem.
    and people still think you're stupid when you can't hear them....
    the terms 'deaf' and 'dumb' are still used in derogatory ways ("What the hell is it with you? are you deaf, or something!?" - like you have a mild to severe hearing impediment, just to spite them..."Man you are so dumb".....the hard of hearing prefer the term 'mute', as dumb carried connotations of being stupid......if you can't talk, then you must be thick, or a retard...)

    I've lost count of the times people have used those terms against me - sometimes, from people who know me very well - and should know better....

    2: cure for tinnitus? I don't think so, but apparently medical scientists are experimenting with injecting glucosamine sulphate directly into the ear, and there appears to be a success rate...
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