There is no doubt that we humans love music, but overall, the mechanism by which music affects us remains a mystery. However, some of the latest scientific research results can help us gradually uncover this mystery.
How does music help us exercise?
People like to sing songs or listen to music while doing physical activities. For example, during the labor process, workers often sing impromptu labor chants while working. Some exercisers also like to listen to music through mobile phones or iPods and other devices when running outdoors, especially those that are dynamic and powerful.
So, what role does music play in people’s physical activities? Scientists have found that for moderate physical activity, music can reduce fatigue and increase physical output. If the rhythm of music is synchronized with the rhythm of people's exercise, it will increase people's endurance and improve metabolic efficiency. Why does music have such a positive effect? Scientists believe that music plays a role in diverting attention from paying attention to body movements to listening to music.
However, experiments conducted by scientists from Germany found that music does more than just this.
A German scientist used a fitness system he invented to conduct experiments. The biggest feature of this fitness system is that when you exercise, the system will generate corresponding music based on the rhythm, strength and amplitude of your movements. . In other words, you are making music while exercising.
The scientist found more than 60 volunteers to conduct experiments, and these volunteers were tested in groups of three. The first time was just playing some music while they worked out. The second time they exercised, they did not play music. Instead, the fitness system played the music generated instantly during their exercise, so that they could make and hear their own music while exercising. And because there were three people in each group, for To coordinate the music, the three of them also paid great attention to their own rhythm and tried to make the music they created look like a piece played together.
After they finished exercising, the scientists asked them to rate their feelings of fatigue in two situations. Although the intensity of the two exercises was the same, the survey results found that 53 of more than 60 volunteers believed that the first exercise was more tiring than the second exercise. This result shocked other scientists because the music did not act as a diversion when exercising while making music. Because exercisers cannot ignore the music produced by their movements, they will carefully pay attention to the connection between the movements of each part of their body and the music produced.
So why are there different feelings of fatigue? The German scientist speculated that although the role of music in diverting attention is not exerted, there is some kind of perception generated when creating music at work in the brain. When this perception is activated, it will bring people a sense of satisfaction, which will reduce Fatigue that occurs during physical activity. This may explain why exercisers like to exercise to the rhythm of music, because in this case they may also activate this perception in the brain.
Some experts have questioned the experiments mentioned above. They believe that the survey did not quantify the fatigue after the two exercises separately, but only compared the feelings of the volunteers under the two exercise conditions. It is important to record fatigue in detail separately to rule out the following situation: if people engage in physical activities that are too intense, the effect of music will disappear, because your body will bear too much fatigue, and your brain will ignore the music. exist.
Other experts believe that social reasons cannot be ignored. Because when using this fitness system, three volunteers exercise together and play music together, it is obvious that human interaction will produce more fun. Some experts suggest that more careful research should be done on how people interact with others through music during physical activity.
Why do you like this piece of music instead of that one?
Everyone has their own unique taste in music, some people like rock, some people like jazz, and some people hate electronic dance music.
And behind all this, how does the brain determine your musical preferences?
First, scientists have to analyze what happens in the brain when people listen to their favorite music.
Researchers from Canada conducted experiments on this. They asked volunteers to listen to some music they particularly liked, and then scanned their brains. The researchers injected volunteers with radioactive tracers that could localize dopamine so they could observe changes in dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that has the function of transmitting happiness and excitement, and is called the "happy substance".
Study found that after volunteers listened to their favorite music, their brains were filled with dopamine. This may explain why people experience pleasure when listening to their favorite music. But how does the brain's dopamine system react differently when people hear different music?
This group of researchers conducted a more in-depth exploration. They selected 19 volunteers with similar musical preferences to participate in the experiment, and asked the volunteers to listen to song clips that they had never heard but that they might like. The researchers used the latest magnetic resonance imaging technology to To observe the brain activity of volunteers - mainly observing the nucleus accumbens part of the volunteers' brains, and the related activities between the nucleus accumbens and other parts of the brain. The results showed that when the volunteers listened to different music, different strengths of connections were established between the nucleus accumbens and the auditory cortex of the brain. The auditory cortex of the human brain stores records of all the sounds and experiences a person has heard in his life.
After listening, volunteers were asked to bid and purchase each song in an auction. But volunteers have to use their own money, so they have to carefully bid on each song, which can objectively measure how much the volunteers like the songs.
It was found that how much the volunteers paid for the songs was related to the strength of the connection between the nucleus accumbens and the auditory cortex of the brain. The stronger this connection in the brain, the higher the volunteers bid for the songs. By observing this connection, the researchers were able to make a pretty good guess at how much money the volunteers would pay, and the results confirmed their guesses.
For this reason, researchers speculate that music liking depends on a person’s past experience of listening to music. When people hear a piece of unfamiliar music, they will evoke their past experiences of listening to music and make certain expectations. If it meets or exceeds your expectations, the nucleus accumbens will be stimulated accordingly, making people feel happy. If it falls below expectations, people will feel bored and disappointed.
There are many other issues worth exploring here. For example, how is musical experience structured within the auditory cortex of our brains? When listening to a song, how long does it take for us to know if we like it? Why would a pair of sisters who grew up in the same music environment have completely different musical tastes? These are awaiting further investigation by researchers.
Why does music produce emotions?
Why do lullabies calm newborns? Why can military music boost soldiers' morale? And heavy metal music makes some people restless?
Indeed, each of us can experience specific emotions brought by music, some are calm, some are passionate, some are angry, etc. So what is the mechanism behind this?
In order to explore the mechanism of music’s effect on emotions, researchers from Dartmouth College in the United States conducted relevant experiments. The tools used in the experiment were a set of computer programs they invented. The five configuration parameters in the program can be adjusted, and these five configuration parameters respectively control certain properties of the music or the sphere. After the parameters are set, the program can automatically generate corresponding music, or automatically generate an animated short film about a jumping sphere.
The researchers found 50 students studying at this college, first familiarized them with this program, and then asked half of them to use this program to make music, while the other half made animated short films of jumping spheres. Use these two ways to express specific emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, calmness, etc.
The results of the experiment show that when expressing the same emotion, the five configuration parameters selected by volunteers are almost the same, whether the volunteers are making music or animation.
The volunteers who participated in the above experiment are all people from Western cultural backgrounds. If other people with different cultural backgrounds come to do this experiment, will the configuration parameter selection be the same? Therefore, for the rigor and completeness of the experiment, the experimenters came to a small tribe in Cambodia far away from modern civilization to conduct the same experiment.
The villagers of this tribe still live in a very primitive way. Their music is very different from Western music. For example, Western music has a heptatonic scale, but music here does not have this standard. The researchers designed the experiment to be easier to understand because most of the tribe was illiterate and had no computer skills. Although there are huge cultural differences between the researchers and the tribal villagers, the villagers were very enthusiastic about participating in the experiment. The experiment was completed within a month, and the results were encouraging: When expressing the same emotion, the tribal villagers chose almost the same configuration parameters as the American students. So what does this entire study show?
Obviously, the understanding of the animation of the jumping ball is actually the understanding of body movements, so researchers speculate that our cognitive ability to produce emotions while listening to music may be due to a primitive skill It evolved, and this primitive skill is the ability to understand emotions from body movements.
Based on this idea, researchers speculate that music was born not only because it entertains us, but also as a more sophisticated means for us to express and communicate our feelings.