Current:Home > InvestThese scientists explain the power of music to spark awe -Wealth Evolution Experts
These scientists explain the power of music to spark awe
View
Date:2025-04-12 00:42:01
This summer, I traveled to Montreal to do one of my favorite things: Listen to live music.
For three days, I wandered around the Montreal Jazz Festival with two buddies, listening to jazz, rock, blues and all kinds of surprising musical mashups.
There was the New Orleans-based group Tank and the Bangas, Danish/Turkish/Kurdish band called AySay, and the Montreal-based Mike Goudreau Band.
All of this reminded me how magnificent music has been in my life — growing up with The Boss in New Jersey, falling in love with folk-rockers like Neil Young, discovering punk rock groups like The Clash in college, and, yeah, these days, marveling at Taylor Swift.
Music could always lift me up and transport me. It's the closest I've ever come to having a religious experience.
The body and brain on music
This got me thinking: Why? Why does music do that?
So I called up some experts to get their insights on what underlies this powerful experience.
"Music does evoke a sense of wonder and awe for lots of people," says Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University who scans the brains of people while they listen to tunes.
"Some of it is still mysterious to us," he says, "But what we can talk about are some neural circuits or networks involved in the experience of pleasure and reward."
When you're listening to music that you really like, brain circuits involving parts of the brain called the amygdala, ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens come on line, he explains. These are the same areas that get activated if you're thirsty and you have a drink, or if you're feeling "randy and have sex."
That triggers the production of brain chemicals that are involved in feelings like pleasure.
"It modulates levels of dopamine, as well as opioids in the brain. Your brain makes opioids," he says.
Neurons in the brain even fire with the beat of the music, which helps people feel connected to one another by literally synchronizing their brain waves when they listen to the same song.
"What we used to say in the '60s is, 'Hey, I'm on the same wavelength as you man,'" Levitin says. "But it's literally true — your brain waves are synchronized listening to music."
Music also has a calming effect, slowing our heart rate, deepening our breathing and lowering stress hormones. This makes us feel more connected to other people as well as the world around us, especially when we start to dance together.
"Those pathways of changing our body, symbolizing what is vast and mysterious for us, and then moving our bodies, triggers the mind into a state of wonder," Dacher Keltner, a University of California, Berkeley, psychologist, told me.
"We imagine, 'Why do I feel this way? What is this music teaching me about what is vast and mysterious?' Music allows us to feel these transcendent emotions," he says.
Emotions like awe, which stimulates the brain into a sense of wonder, help "counter the epidemic of our times, which is loneliness," Keltner says. "With music, we feel we're part of community and that has a direct effect on health and well-being," which is crucial to survival.
That could be why music plays such a powerful role in many religions, spirituality and rituals, he says.
A rocker weighs in
All this made me wonder: Do musicians feel this way, too?
"Yeah, I definitely experience wonder while playing music on a regular basis," says Mike Gordon, the bass player for the band Phish.
He suddenly vividly remembers dreams and doesn't want to be anywhere else, he says.
"It's almost like these neural pathways are opening. And it's almost like the air around me crystalizes where everything around me is more itself," Gordon says. "I develop this sort of hypersensitivity, where it's now electrified."
veryGood! (71346)
Related
- 'Most Whopper
- Gotham signs 13-year-old MaKenna ‘Mak’ Whitham through 2028, youngest to get an NWSL contract
- Northern Wyoming plane crash causes fatalities, sparks wildfire
- Lady Gaga stuns in Olympics opening ceremony performance with French feathers and Dior
- Buckingham Palace staff under investigation for 'bar brawl'
- Homeless people say they will likely return to sites if California clears them under Newsom’s order
- NORAD intercepts Russian and Chinese bombers off coast of Alaska
- Taco Bell is celebrating Baja Blast's 20th anniversary with freebies and Stanley Cups
- Costco membership growth 'robust,' even amid fee increase: What to know about earnings release
- What’s in a name? GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance has had many of them
Ranking
- Former Syrian official arrested in California who oversaw prison charged with torture
- French rail system crippled before start of Olympics: See where attacks occurred
- FBI says Trump was indeed struck by bullet during assassination attempt
- The Boyz' tour diary on second US tour, performing: 'It feels like a dream'
- The White House is cracking down on overdraft fees
- Gizmo the dog went missing in Las Vegas in 2015. He’s been found alive after 9 years
- Scores of wildfires are scorching swaths of the US and Canada. Here’s the latest on them
- Chipotle CEO addresses portion complaints spawned by viral 'Camera Trick' TikTok challenge
Recommendation
Newly elected West Virginia lawmaker arrested and accused of making terroristic threats
US promises $240 million to improve fish hatcheries, protect tribal rights in Pacific Northwest
Tom Daley Is the King of the World at the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony
A look at ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, the kingpin of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel who is now in US custody
Person accused of accosting Rep. Nancy Mace at Capitol pleads not guilty to assault charge
Park Fire swells to over 164,000 acres; thousands of residents under evacuation orders
Man accused of saying Trump 'needs to die', tossing chairs off balcony at Nashville hotel
The city of Atlanta fires its human resources chief over ‘preferential treatment’ of her daughter