Music, which has always been a universal language, has enormous power over our emotions, but why are we so attracted to it?
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himMusic, which has always been a universal language, has enormous power over our emotions, but why are we so attracted to it? What "strings" of our brain does it go to touch?
Music has always had a positive effect on the human mind. It is no coincidence that it is also often used as a therapy. A universal language that manages to change mood, regulate stress and “touch” deep chords. But how does it affect our brain?
Just like when we enjoy our favorite dish or enjoy a chat with friends, even when we listen to good music we feel gratification, pleasure. But why does this happen? Finally an experimental study, conducted by the team of Professor Ernest Mas-Herrero and published by the scientific journal JNeurosci, tries to give scientific basis to this connection between listening to music and mechanisms of gratification at the brain level.
@ Mas-Herrero et al., JNeurosci 2021
Using the technique of neuroimaging, a relatively new discipline in the field of neuronal sciences that deals with mapping the structure and function of the nervous system, the study showed that music has a truly beneficial and rewarding power on our brain, as much as others " pleasures ”: Basically, the effects of music on the brain are the same as when you get other rewarding rewards - such as food, money, alcohol. But without any contraindications!
A group of volunteers was subjected to listening to some pop music pieces, while the team of scholars monitored their brain activity thanks to functional magnetic resonance imaging. Before listening, however, the volunteers underwent a non-invasive brain stimulation that changed the functioning of their reward mechanism, either arousing or inhibiting it. It was seen how, by exciting the reward circuit, the pleasure of the participants during listening increased, while it decreased in the volunteers whose functioning of this circuit had been inhibited.
The artificial changes in pleasure caused by stimulation are related to changes in activity within the nucleus accumbens - a region of the hypothalamus that plays a fundamental role in the mechanisms of gratification and reward, as well as consolidation and repetition of an action (this which prompts us to repeat an action because we liked it or we benefited from it). (READ also How to stimulate endorphins in a natural way to get better?)
This explains why, when we listen to a song we like - regardless of the genre - we feel pleasant sensations and we are pushed to listen to it again. Or why certain songs act as real mood "medicines".
Source: jneurosci.org
You might also like:
- Music is good, so the children's orchestra plays for the little cancer patients in the hospital
- Against anxiety and stress this song for scientists works better than Xanax
- If you play drums, your brain performs above average
- Sound bath: the regenerative power of vibrations to rebalance body, mind and spirit
