A blog about how music can shape our emotions and enhance our memories
Gennarina Riso
Anyone who knows much about me is aware that I
love music. I don’t play any instruments (although I am determined to learn the
saxophone someday), but I always have music on at my house and am constantly
going to see live shows of all kinds. I was recently watching Bruce
Springsteen’s acceptance speech for the 2013 MusiCares Award (see below, if you
wish). In his speech, he talked about what a gift being a musician is, and how
profound music can be in a person’s life:
“…music
has inspired us and soothed our broken hearts, angered us … music we have
gotten married to, divorced to, music that has stood by us on our blackest
days, stood by us in war, and in peace. Made us laugh, made us stay strong…”
I know that I can associate certain songs or
artists with important times in my life and when I hear them, I feel whatever
corresponding emotions that I felt at the time of the event. For example,
whenever I hear “The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra, I am immediately 8
years old again, dancing with my little sister by the campfire in Big Sur. Or
when I hear “Rosalita” by Bruce Springsteen, I am a teenager, in my mom’s minivan
on the way to school, secretly enjoying the music but outwardly acting
embarrassed by my mom’s dancing and singing.
And there are a thousand other such moments, some lighthearted, and some
extremely personal. All of this got me
thinking: there must be some kind of physiological reason that music can have
such a profound effect on us. There must be some reason that thousands of
strangers are able to separately arrive to a concert, seemingly having nothing
in common, but while the music is playing, their differences dissolve -- during
that time, they become connected by the music, regardless of age or background.
Figure 1. Bruce Springsteen asking (I imagine)
his classic question of his audience: “Is there anybody alive out there?!”
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I think it is interesting to note that as I was
researching the connection between music and emotions, I found that psychologists
and scientists alike have a hard time defining and agreeing upon what exactly
emotions are. Are they primarily a person’s subjective feelings regarding the
significance of an event? Are they rooted in physiological functions, such as activation
of the autonomic nervous system? And how can emotions be defined in an
objective sense when they are so closely connected to our mood and well-being?
Studies involving emotions have given results
that are all over the map; some show that depressed people tend to remember
more unpleasant words from a conversation, while other studies have shown the
complete opposite. This issue becomes further complicated by the fact that some
people believe we have a set list of discrete emotions (such as happy, sad,
scared, etc.), while others think we have more of an “emotional continuum” that
is much more complex. In addition, researchers who study music and emotions
have been careful to make a distinction between a person’s perceived emotional response to music and their actual personal emotional response. In
other words, does hearing a sad song actually make you feel sad, or are you
just recognizing the sadness of the musician?
Scientists who think it is possible for music
to conjure real emotions in listeners have created a list of possible
mechanisms/explanations for this reaction. Of these, there are three that stand
out to me from a physiological perspective:
-Brain stem reflexes in
which our brains naturally respond to certain aspects of music such as volume
or tempo.
-Emotional contagion, which
describes a situation where the listener utilizes empathy-related pathways in
order to feel an emotion that is portrayed by a song.
-Episodic memory refers
to the phenomenon in which songs cause us to recall a certain event in our
lives, much like I described above.
In a study conducted by
Trost, et al., subjects (who all stated that they enjoyed classical music)
listened to a grouping of songs and then were asked to categorize how the songs
made them feel and how strongly, given a list of 9 words: Joy, Sadness, Tension, Wonder, Peacefulness, Power,
Tenderness, Nostalgia, and Transcendence. The subjects then had to rate their
arousal (in terms of how calm they felt), valence (how pleasant or unpleasant
they felt) and familiarity while listening to the music. These responses were
all grouped together before fMRI images were taken while the subjects listened
to the music. (Note: they stated that they removed familiarity from their
images because it did not affect results and only made interpretation of the
data more confusing).
What they show is
very interesting, although not entirely surprising. Much of the time, regions
of the brain associated with the limbic system or paralimbic system were
stimulated while listening to this music. Something that was interesting if not
surprising surprising to me, however, was that people’s “subjective”
associations actually were mirrored with their scans. For example, the A+/V+
association, or highly aroused, highly pleasant associations, illustrated that
sounds that subjects associated with “wonder” and “power” corresponded to
stimulation of the motor cortex, while “joy” tended to stimulate the
hippocampus. In addition, music associated with high pleasantness or high
valence also stimulated both the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus
accumbens, which as we know from learning about nicotine, is associated
strongly with rewards pathways in the brain that lead to very real
physiological responses. I found this particularly amusing, as I immediately
thought of the song “Cold Hard Bitch” by Jet, and how I was listening to that
song as I crossed the finish line during a half-marathon – talk about
associating power with motor cortex stimulation!
Figure 2. fMRI images corresponding to
subjective emotional responses to music.
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But what about music that has lyrics? Classical
music is commonly used in studies involving music and emotion because it
generally alleviates the possible confounding variable of the effect that
lyrics coupled with music might have on emotion. Studies have shown that songs
with lyrics activate language centers in the brain as well as the superior and
inferior temporal gyri, which are associated with processing of sound, speech,
and even face perception, speaking to how music can literally stimulate parts
of the brain that allow us to feel empathy and relate to others. fMRI images
have shown that instrumental music tends to enhance activity in areas of the
brain associated with emotional control (such as the singulate gyrus and
prefrontal cortex) in comparison with music containing lyrics.
Figure 3. Comparison of brain activity in
response to music with lyrics and basic emotions.
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All of this information made me wonder if there
is a place in medicine for music therapy. While I focused my research on both
the effects of music treatment on cognition in Alzheimer’s patients and
patients with traumatic brain injury, I found an overwhelming volume of studies
that (apparently) show promising results for music treatment for people with Autism,
Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease, and others.
Music therapy for individuals with varying
levels of dementia is not a new concept, as there is much well documented
evidence that people are able to better express their emotions through music
despite the deterioration of their ability to express themselves through
speech. For example, it has been shown at weekly group singing exercises in
people with various types of dementia have positive results. Patients were able
to learn new songs, sing in complex rounds, and even whistle or dance to the
music when speech was not possible. Further, caregivers noticed that these
patients enjoyed sitting in circles when singing so they could make eye contact
with their peers, presumably allowing them to make greater emotional
connections that way. Families also reported that throughout these exercises,
patients became progressively more alert and confident.
Similarly, studies have shown that after
several sessions with a certified music therapist, people with traumatic brain
injury show significant improvements to their levels of confidence, depression,
and levels of hostility. I think it would be very interesting to study the long
term effects of music therapy and neurogenesis on patients with neurological injury,
as they presumably would show greater improvements in memory and cognation
after they feel more confident and less helpless.
Figure 4. A group of elderly people enjoying
music together.
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So, when Bruce Springsteen refers to music as
magic, he is not entirely incorrect; our bodies have actual physiological
responses to musical sound, but the larger than life effects of that music
still seem a bit mystical. It appears that by recognizing the physiological link between music and emotions, and integrating this knowledge into research and treatment, great strides can be made in enhancing the functionality of music therapy.
References:
Vuoskoski, Jonna K.
"Emotions Represented and Induced by Music." Diss. University of
Jyväskylä, 2012. Abstract. (n.d.): n. pag. Print.
Trost, W., T. Ethofer, M.
Zentner, and P. Vuilleumier. 2011. Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the
Brain. Cerebral Cortex. Web.
Bannan, N. and C.
Montgomery-Smith. 2008. `Singing for
the Brain': reflections on the human capacity for music arising from a pilot
study of group singing with Alzheimer's patients. The Journal of the Royal
Society for the Promotion of Health 128: 73-78.
Nakahara, H., S. Furuya, S. Obata, T. Masuko, and H. Kinoshita. 2009. Emotion-related
Changes in Heart Rate and Its Variability during Performance and Perception of
Music. The Neurosciences and Music III:
Disorders and Plasticity 1169: 359-362.
Thaut, M., J.
Gardiner, D. Holmberg, J. Horwitz, L. Kent, G. Andrews, B. Donelan, and G.
McIntosh. 2009. Neurologic Music
Therapy Improves Executive Function and Emotional Adjustment in Traumatic Brain
Injury Rehabilitation. The Neurosciences and Music III: Disorders and
Plasticity 1169: 406-416.
Brattico, E., V.
Alluri, B. Bogert, T. Jacobsen, N. Vartiainen, S. Nieminen, and M. Tervaniemi.
2011. A functional MRI study of happy and sad emotions in music with and
without lyrics. Frontiers in Psychology. Web.
I love all the different aspects of music that you touched on Gennarina! Clearly, music affects our brains in complex and multifaceted ways that we will probably never fully understand. It can definitely be therapeutic, however, and I wish we would turn to things like music more readily than pills. As an anecdote to add to the examples you gave, my grandma has Alzheimer's and one of the few things she still remembers (and that clearly gives her joy) are the songs she learned in church as a little girl.
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