"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche
As we have seen with Dan's, Jenn's, and Sade's blog posts, music is everywhere! And music is so important to us, we simply cannot live without it. But, what is it about music that moves us? How and why are we so drawn to music?
Research shows that what we feel when we hear a piece of music is remarkably similar to what everybody else in the room is experiencing. In other words, everyone seems to pretty much share the experience of a similar emotion when listening to the same song. But, how does this happen?
The composer and music theorist Leonard Meyer argues that music that is too simple or too complex is likely to irritate. The secret to composing a likeable song is to balance predictability and surprise. A good composer will reward the listener's expectations often enough to maintain him or her interested, but will also violate those expectations the rest of the time in interesting ways.
Neurologically, this is what is going on in our brains: our neural circuits are being exercised when we listen to music, which is done by simultaneously rewarding them for correct predictions and challenging them to learn new principles for organizing the world. Also, listening to music activates reward and pleasure circuits in brain regions such as the nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area and amygdala, modulating production of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Pretty cool, huh?
Info from: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/464834a.html
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