Daniel Levitin is the author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs, and professor of psychology and music at McGill University of Montreal. Dr. Levitin said that music activates neurons in more regions of the brain than almost anything else scientists know of. He said that music causes the release of neurochemicals in our brains. He told EarthSky:
Photo credit: Libertinus
We know that the brain is musical because there are specific neural circuits. And by that, I mean specific regions of the brain dedicated to processing music and nothing else. Our brain structure changes every time we learn something new.
For example, listening to music you like causes the release of dopamine, the so called “feel good” hormone, and on the opposite side, listening to music you hate, will activate the amygdala, the brain’s fight or flight center, and that will cause a release of adrenaline.
Dr. Levitin said that we are all musical experts, because we know the kind of music that resonates with us on an emotional level.
We see this, in fact, in the way people incorporate music into their lives. A lot of people use a certain kind of music to get going in the morning, to get out of bed, to get them through an exercise workout, to calm themselves down at the end of the day. We’re using music in the same way we use drugs, really, for emotional regulation, partly because of the way it can modulate our neurochemistry, affecting our moods.
Dr. Levitin said humans are a musical species and that our brains co-evolved with music as a means of communicating with each other. He said:
I think that for many of us, music is an alternative way of communicating. There are things that music can do for us that language can’t. I know for example, if you’re feeling really uptight or stressed, you’ve had a bad day, you had a fight with somebody – words sometimes aren’t as soothing as the right piece of music. As another example, look at love songs – I think the reason they exist is that they’re able to communicate in an emotional way that words alone just can’t.
Hil,
I really like this piece. I’ve recently begun to think of sound as being as sensual as touch, because it’s literally wavelength — vibrations — tickling the tiny hairs inside our ears. (Somehow, when use the phrase “hairs inside our ears” it doesn’t actually sound so sensual, anymore).
Did Leivitin address the conundrum of folks who don’t really like music? Are they weirdos? Are they just stronger in another part of the brain. Some of my closest friends just aren’t big music fans, and I’ve always wondered, “???”
I think they probably don’t like all that is popular but everyone tends to like at least type of music a lot. Some people have never heard of neo-classical, new age or neo-soul, drum and base, world music or all the other types of music out there.
I often wonder why a song really resonates with me at one time, and a couple months later it’s replaced with another song, and the first one doesn’t resonate as strongly.
It probably just doesn’t have the same effect after hearing it so many times the same way if someone gave you a new compliment you’d be really flattered but hearing them say it every time they saw you, you’d get a bit bored of hearing it.
Interesting thoughts you two!
I’d be curious to know if there are people who don’t find ANY musical sounds appealing. Levitin explained that each of us is a musical expert in the way that we all know what type of music we like…and what type of music we don’t like.
Music is like a burr in my brain – certain songs will be on repeat for a weekend and are abandoned until I find them again on my iTunes shuffle capacity months later. There’s something so familiar about them and they bring me back to a particular mood or set of emotions I was experiencing at the time that I lived with that song.
In this sense music can be seen as the medium for time travel. Often I can listen to music once listened to twenty years ago and magically memories are retrieved….and the attendant physical feelings.
Yes, some people with amusia either hate or feel indifferent to every piece of music that they hear because to them everything sounds exactly the same.
It’s interesting that Dr. Levitin states our brains co-evolved with music as a means of communicating with each other. What would humans be like had there never been music? Would we have become” human” at all?
Read Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia to answer many of the above readers’ questions. Also I recommend Dr. Levitin’s book, This Is Your Brain On Music. Both books are very readable, easy to understand, yet not simplistic.
@Martha – I hope to interview Oliver Sacks about his research as well. Levitin’s and Sacks’ research compliment one another.
Does it count if the music is in your head – i.e., not audible to other people?
Maybe the last question is the most interesting for me! Isn’t our brain musical inherently? I mean independently from musical audio???
Where can I research between neuroscience and music?
Where can I buy the book mentioned above online?
[...] Daniel Levitin on our musical brain The new study also reveals that even the anticipation of pleasurable music induces dopamine release. The same is the case with food, drug, and sex cues. The study is from The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University. It was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, [...]
I can clearly remember not liking opera; During my high school years and early 20′s.
By my mid 30′s I was an opera fan.
I wonder what changes took place in my brain before, during and after that shift.
What about people who were born without their sense of hearing? I know that that vibrations come into play but do they sense music in their heads as others do?
[...] A lire en ligne et en anglais sur Earth Sky. Share this:TwitterFacebookPlusEmailJ'aimeJ'aime [...]
Hearing is the only one of our senses that can not be turned off during sleeping.
Animals are ‘wired’ the same way and humans still retain that trait today.
This apparently aided greatly with survival of early humans in detecting potentially life-threatening sounds from approaching predators while asleep.
Interestingly, the human brain has two different areas for sound and music recognition in either halves of the brain.
Many musicians perceive sounds as music and in brain scans show both areas as very active, regardless of the quality and type of sound waves.
Sounds and music, just like tastes/smells, remind us of certain times and places with very high accuracy.
And we can remember exactly how we felt when we heard a particular sound or music for the first time.
Hearing music is by far the most immediate connector to our emotions, leaving the other senses behind and not as effective.
I am an instrument maker and since I can remember always have found hearing, sounds and music endlessly fascinating.
Its part of my daily life and I can’t imagine it without it.
Everytime I listen to Beethoven I remember that he was completely deaf in his later years, when he composed many of his most beautiful works and even entire symphonies we all know.
It breaks my heart, but it also teaches me that you can never remove music from our minds, which gives me great solace.
Interesting research! I wonder if there is any difference in brain development between babies who were sang to often by their mothers and babies who weren’t sang to much or at all. My little ones loved to have me sing (even though I don’t have a great singing voice) and I sang to them often throughout the day. Fun, fast paced songs could have the power to stop tantrums and change moods. Quiet lullabies would soothe to sleep or comfort after an injury. Music is powerful.
I’d be interested to know what it says about persons who hear music, not only in the usual way – performed by musicians – but also in most forms of sound that they hear everyday, whether by rhythm, tonality, or both. Sounds like trucks on the road, wind in the trees, people talking, other forms of sound that aren’t usually regarded as music.