WHEN 鈥淛oe鈥� checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, he took Rachmaninoff
with him. For four weeks, day and night, he played a tape of the Piano Concerto
No 2 in C minor. The music, he says, made life come back. For others, music can
be the root of evil. A decade ago, two American kids spent six hours listening
to Judas Priest before shooting themselves in a suicide pact. Famously, the band
was put on trial.
Not everyone has such extreme reactions to music. But it is a rare person who
has no reaction at all. From inciting revolutionary movements to luring two
people into an embrace, music has the power to conjure strong emotions. But how
does it do it? Why has evolution left our emotions so plainly at the mercy of
music?
Perhaps we have nothing more to thank than our big brains. Perhaps our
superior understanding of music evolved as a by-product of the brain growth that
gave us a talent for language and mathematics. That, at least,was the view of
the ancient Greeks as they studied the naturally recurring divisions of a
vibrating string and expressed them as a series of ratios. They expounded
mathematical formulas, explained the periodicity of the planets and contemplated
the harmony of the spheres. Music was logical, rational, explicable, a
foundation for everything.
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But such lofty sentiments are seldom expressed in the laboratory of Jaak
Panksepp, a 鈥減sychobiologist鈥� at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who has
spent the past ten years studying how people and animals respond to music. Far
from plugging into the higher levels of the mind and brain, as language does,
music, Panksepp believes, is experienced mainly in the lower regions of the
brain. The experience is primal, he says. What鈥檚 more, it exploits brain
mechanisms and biochemical systems in the body that originally evolved to make
mammals and other animals emotionally responsive to the needy cries of their
offspring. 鈥淢usic captures something essential about the separation calls of
young infants,鈥� says Panksepp. 鈥淚t hooks directly into the brain鈥檚 primitive
emotional circuits.鈥�
Fans of Metallica might never have thought otherwise. Yet Panksepp himself
has arrived at this position only after years of painstaking research into
something he and his colleagues call the 鈥渃hill鈥�. It could be Bob Marley who
does it for you. Or maybe Bach or Bartok. But if a certain something sends a
shiver down the back of your neck, you, too, are experiencing the chill, one of
psychology鈥檚 best measures of the way music plays with the emotions. Among the
other common physical responses to music are tears, laughter or a racing heart.
But of these, says Panksepp, it鈥檚 the chill reaction that grabs us most.
And he should know. Panksepp has assessed the chill reactions to music of
literally hundreds of different human guinea pigs. People can report with a fair
degree of precision when they are experiencing chills, explains Panksepp. And
while most of his work is based on such subjective reports, Panksepp has also
discovered that chill reactions are accompanied by physical changes that can be
objectively measured. People鈥檚 peripheral nervous systems become more active,
for instance, so the electrical conductivity of their skin changes. And in the
one subject whose brain activity Panksepp tested with an electroencephalograph,
the chill coincided with bursts of activity in the frontal lobe.
Overall, Panksepp has found that chills are evoked more often by sad music
than by happy music and by familiar music than by new music, with intense
passages such as crescendos proving, as one would expect, especially chilling.
Women, on the whole, experience more musical chills than men.
Rather more surprising is Panksepp鈥檚 discovery that humans may not be alone
in experiencing musical chill: chickens get the shivers too. In fact, they
respond especially well to Pink Floyd. Some years back, Panksepp tried playing
The Final Cut to some chicks. Apparently, they responded by ruffling
their feathers鈥攖he avian equivalent, Panksepp believes, of the human
shiver. Musically moved hens also shook their heads vigorously鈥斺�漥ust like
violin players鈥�, says Panksepp鈥攁nd yawned a lot. None of these reactions
occurred so strongly to other sounds.
There鈥檚 a serious point to such studies. If chicks really can experience
musical chills, then the chemical mechanisms in the brain and body that create
the sensation must be ancient indeed: chicks and humans went their separate
evolutionary ways hundreds of millions of years ago. But what are these ancient
chill mechanisms?
Panksepp鈥檚 research with animals points to a link with crying offspring. Take
a guinea pig or a bird or a dog from its family group and it will show distress
by squeaking, cheeping or howling. Often, the animal鈥檚 body temperature drops as
well; as does its mother鈥檚 when she hears the cries of distress. Returning the
animal to its group, conversely, will soothe鈥攁nd warm the bodies
of鈥攎other and offspring alike. Panksepp has evidence that this soothing
and warming is the work of chemicals released in the brain at the moment of
reunion, including endorphins, the body鈥檚 own painkillers, oxytocin, a
neuropeptide implicated in maternal and sexual behaviour, and prolactin.
Some of the same chemicals could be released in the brains of humans
following a chill reaction to music, says Panksepp. Indeed, he believes that the
chill is part of a mechanism designed to make human parents respond rapidly to
their offspring鈥檚 cries for help or attention. The wail of a baby results in a
drop in parental body temperature, says Panksepp, and this feeling of coldness
motivates parents to unite with their young.
On the face of it, Brahms doesn鈥檛 sound much like a wailing baby. In one
experiment, however, Panksepp evoked chills in adult humans by playing them
recordings of their own child crying. Panksepp can only guess at why music
produces the same response: 鈥淧erhaps the chill that we experience especially
intensely during sad and bittersweet songs occurs because that type of music
resonates with the ancient emotional circuits.鈥�
John Sloboda, a psychologist at the University of Keele and a veteran of
research into music and emotions, may have another part of the answer. A few
years ago, Sloboda completed a study in which he asked 83 musicians to name
pieces of music that made them laugh, cry, tremble, shiver or experience other
emotional effects. He asked subjects to identify exactly where in the score they
had experienced these.
When Sloboda examined in detail just what provoked the most emotion, he found
that certain musical patterns or 鈥渟tructures鈥� seemed to produce specific
physical responses. A series of harmonic tensions, for instance, which build and
are then resolved, made people feel tearful. So did appoggiaturas, ornamental
notes that embellish a melody. But neither of these seemed to produce the chill.
For that reaction, sudden shifts in harmony seemed most effective.
Sloboda suggests that it is 鈥渧iolated expectations鈥� that bring on strong
emotional responses. And different violations bring on different kinds of
emotional reactions. Western music is based on rules of harmony, melody and
rhythm. Applying these rules creates patterns within the music. Hearing a
progression from E to F鈾�, for instance, sets up an expectation for G鈾�. A set of
rising tones builds the overall feeling that notes will keep rising. Not getting
what we expect creates tension; getting something we don鈥檛 anticipate at all
tends to surprise.
鈥淚t is part of our biological make-up to respond to change,鈥� says Sloboda.
鈥淐hange could signal a threat, so we need to be attentive.鈥� Sloboda believes the
ability to recognise subtle changes in music is therefore largely innate. 鈥淓ven
newborns generate expectancies,鈥� he points out.
Work by Sandra Trehub, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, backs
this up. In a recent study, she has a six-month-old infant sitting in its
mother鈥檚 lap, watching a puppet show straight ahead. Off left, a simple tune is
playing over and over. While the baby sits, engrossed, Trehub tinkers with the
music: she changes the pitch here, alters the rhythm slightly there or simply
plays a wrong note. At each of these changes, Trehub has found that her young
subjects turn their attention away from the display in front of them and look
toward the music. At only six months, babies can already recognise auditory
change. 鈥淲hen you see an ability clearly present in a six-month-old, you have to
concede that there was some sort of biological push to make that easy to learn,鈥�
says Trehub.
Recognition takes place in the baby鈥檚 cortex, says Sloboda, but the emotional
response comes from a part of the lower brain, the so-called reticular
activating system. The baby becomes alert to the change and turns to look at the
source. In adults, there will be a greater cortical response, and maybe the
bodily reaction won鈥檛 be as strong, he says. 鈥淏ut the basic impulse is
颈苍蝉迟颈苍肠迟颈惫别.鈥�
Mireille Besson, an experimental psychologist at the Centre for Research in
Cognitive Neuroscience in Marseille, agrees. 鈥淲e are not built with these
musical rules in place, but we may have some basic hardwiring that allows us to
learn them quickly.鈥�
Besson鈥檚 evidence comes from experiments showing just how expert our brains
are at detecting faulty notes. She has found that all people, even the musically
naive, respond to faulty notes by producing a surge of brain activity 300 to 500
milliseconds after the note is played. Scalp electrodes will detect this brain
surge, sometimes even in people who are unaware that a mistake has been made.
Besson sees it as the brain鈥檚 way of expressing surprise at faulty notes鈥攁
surprise that in some instances isn鈥檛 even consciously felt.
The big question that must now be asked is whether Besson鈥檚 reflex-type
鈥渟urprise reactions鈥� in the brain have anything to do with our more deeply felt
emotional responses to music. Are they the force behind the chill? Could
studying these brain surges pinpoint exactly what in music raises our
expectations most? Do people from different musical cultures have different
expectations? Besson will soon begin brain imaging studies designed to produce
some answers. The first step will be to see if faulty notes trigger any activity
in the brain鈥檚 inner emotional circuits; a discovery that would greatly
strengthen the idea that surprise is a key element in our emotional responses to
music.
Results like these may start to set the record straight on how the lower
brain and the cortex interact to make sense of music. While the lower brain may
be critical to our emotional response to music, the cortex surely plays a part
in acquiring its rules, deciding what is and what is not music and letting us
know what to be surprised about. Otherwise, how would we know the difference
between a concerto and the sound of a hoover?
Robert Zatorre, a neuropsychologist at Montreal鈥檚 Neurological Institute, is
interested in this sort of question. He compared how the brain handles noise
with how it deals with music. Using the brain scan technique called positron
emission tomography, he watched blood flow patterns in the brain while his
subjects listened first to short bursts of static-like noise and then to simple
melodies.
In both cases, blood flowed to the auditory areas of the brain鈥檚
cortex鈥攚holly predictably, since the act of hearing was clearly taking
place. But when he played a melody, areas of the right brain also lit up. 鈥淭hese
parts may have been extracting meaningful information,鈥� says Zatorre. Perhaps
the brain was assessing the structure of the music鈥攖he shape of the
melody, say, or the expectations it had aroused.
Just how essential that information is to the way we respond emotionally to
music remains hard to judge. At the University of Montreal, neuropsychologist
Isabelle Peretz has chanced on four patients who suffer from amusia: play them
Happy Birthday and they will deny they鈥檝e ever heard it. Nor can they
tell the difference between two jingles or detect a wrong note. But, to Peretz鈥檚
utter surprise, they can assess whether a piece of music is happy or sad.
鈥淭hese people might be short-looping,鈥� says Panksepp. That is, maybe the
emotional content of music can be processed without the cortex at all. He
wonders: do these patients experience the chill?