Music & Brain

Interest in music in the mind is as ancient as philosophy itself. Plato marveled at the power of music over human character and human emotions. In fact, he was quite concerned about the way music could either degrade or elevate the minds of young people. So you can see, in some sense, nothing has changed. He said rhythm and harmony find their ways into the inward places of soul. Well, yes, that's true and he said this in 400 BC. But what has changed since then? It's just in the last few years that brain science has started to seriously investigate music and this young scientist is confirming music's power over us. For example, some colleagues in Montreal decided to do a study to investigate what happens in the brain when people get the chills to music. This is intense emotional responses that often manifest themselves as shivers tingling of the spines. Anybody here had this? OK, it's not uncommon. Everyone gets it. And they specifically looked at chills to instrumental music. So this wasn't due to any associations that people had with lyrics. It was just sounds of music. And they looked at it, they took advantage of the fact that people often know quite well what music gives them chills. They know certain piece, sometimes their passage in that piece and they give them the chills. So they had people bring in their own self-selected CDs and they scan their brains while they were having these experiences listening to music.