In Music and Your Brain, Part I we looked at the magic and mystery of music and how it positively affects nearly every aspect of our consciousness. In Music and Your Brain, Part II we’re going to look at what happens to our brains when we share music by playing it or listening to it with others.
Despite the fact most of us would much rather just stay home, humans are social creatures – always have been and always will be. That’s why every culture has fairs and festivals and centuries-long traditions that are all celebrated with music at the center of each. The world changes but many of these traditions are passed down from generation to generation, keeping our ties to our past resilient. Our connection to music is part of what makes us human.
Despite the fact most of us would much rather just stay home, humans are social creatures – always have been and always will be. That’s why every culture has fairs and festivals and centuries-long traditions that are all celebrated with music at the center of each. The world changes but many of these traditions are passed down from generation to generation, keeping our ties to our past resilient. Our connection to music is part of what makes us human.
Music is the most social of the arts, an artform that is better when created and received by multiple people at a time. Anyone who has ever played an instrument with another person can attest to the fact that a musician’s reality changes when they play. When you play music with other people your pulse and breathing rates begin to synch, and you even gain the ability to predict the future while playing. Without verbalizing a thing, musicians who are in synch with each other develop a sixth sense of where to take the musical passage in the moment as they create it. The tighter the bond between the musicians the more frequent and successful these predictions become.
A similar thing happens when we listen to music. When we listen to a song that hits us so personally it’s as if the songwriter wrote the song specifically for us, we experience a sense of ‘oneness’ with the artist. That’s maybe the best part of being an intentional music fan. The same thing happens when we get goosebumps or chills – or a giant smile – as we listen to something that really moves us. That feeling is amplified when we share that moment with other people, which makes listening to music a very intimate experience and a very communal experience at the same time. It’s far deeper than simple recognition of the emotional bond between artist and listener. It’s a connection between everyone present to a shared experience.
A recent study out of Keio University in Japan examined the links in social behaviors between multiple people when engaged in the same task. The study looked at brain functions of people involved in a similar task as compared to individuals working on their own. Using brain scans of people performing tasks together, the researchers were able to identify Between-Brain Synchronizations in the superior and middle temporal lobes. The pre-frontal cortex in the right hemisphere of each test subject’s brain also lit up in almost exactly the same way. The same was not seen in Within-Brain Synchronization subjects doing the same tasks on their own. The researchers concluded that our brains are wired in a “two-in-one” system during specific social interactions.
Lead researcher Yasuyo Minagawa wrote in the published report that “neuron populations within one brain were activated simultaneously with similar neuron populations in the other brain when the participants cooperated to complete the task, as if the two brains functioned together as a single system for creative problem-solving. These phenomena are consistent with the notion of a ‘we-mode,’ in which interacting agents share their minds in a collective fashion and facilitate interaction by accelerating access to the other’s cognition.”
Lead researcher Yasuyo Minagawa wrote in the published report that “neuron populations within one brain were activated simultaneously with similar neuron populations in the other brain when the participants cooperated to complete the task, as if the two brains functioned together as a single system for creative problem-solving. These phenomena are consistent with the notion of a ‘we-mode,’ in which interacting agents share their minds in a collective fashion and facilitate interaction by accelerating access to the other’s cognition.”
This study shows that the human brain has a powerful ability to understand and synchronize with other brains in the proper situations – music being chief among them. One of the greatest thrills of playing or listening to music with other like-minded people is the non-verbal communication between the participants and now there is scientific proof that our brains are wired this way.
It's fascinating because it gives further credence to the theory that we are hard-wired to make and enjoy music – that music is something we didn’t evolve to enjoy but that was a significant part of our earliest development.
It's fascinating because it gives further credence to the theory that we are hard-wired to make and enjoy music – that music is something we didn’t evolve to enjoy but that was a significant part of our earliest development.
By Jack Sharkey for KEF
