RajKamal B.,

thanks for your interesting answer. You uses the string resonance metapher. Well, I like string theory but I have hardly problems to transfer this theory to neurons and their connections. It seems to be more a vague hypothesis than the result of experimental research, so I think your answer opens more questions than it answers.

Interesting question sir,

See the attached links, quickly read through them myself,

Hope it helps.

http://www.psychologyofmusic.co.uk/emotionandphysiology.html

Sorry and this article, Hope you can find the free pdf,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9606949

This one is a recent one that give some insights in the case of musical chills :

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n2/full/nn.2726.html

Thank you all for your interesting articles.

Krumhansl's article was found at: http://www.brainmusic.org/EducationalActivitiesFolder/Krumhansl_emotion1997.pdf

There is something solid yet to discover for actual effect of music on brain. For now we can say, when there are two types of mechanisms work, one is already installed setup of neuron connection which is in tune with certain music frequencies. While another one in which new neurons connections are formed when we listen a particular music first time. Of course many music or songs when we listen first time we don't like much but slowly we start liking it. When we listen our favorite music certain kind of Endorphins are released which gives us euphoric effect. Ok lets go some more deeper....Using string theory, we predict that every matter is made up of strings of energy vibrating with their own frequencies. These strings made subatomic particles which further makes atoms and molecule. So basically every matter particle has its own frequency, when this frequency matches with external source phenomenon called as resonance. So basically , you can say our neurons also have certain frequency range and their neural connections complex. When external source creates resonance kind of thing it have euphoric kind of effect in our mind. This effect is transferred in body cells too because these are connected with neurons. As a result we feel effect of music on our reflexes. I think in near future we gonna decode the mystery of brain. Thanks!

RajKamal B.,

thanks for your interesting answer. You uses the string resonance metapher. Well, I like string theory but I have hardly problems to transfer this theory to neurons and their connections. It seems to be more a vague hypothesis than the result of experimental research, so I think your answer opens more questions than it answers.

I have recently became interested in which music (production & perception) induces facial emotions? Any ideas or literature recommendations?

I actually just wrote a piece about it on my blog - from a review. Enjoy :)

http://www.curiouscortex.com/blog/2014/4/3/resonant-brain-how-you-feel-music

Teodora,

I enjoyed reading your blog. I think it is a psychological approach to understand the phenomenon. I would like to understand more of the interaction of music and the body-brain-system. What is about synchronisation in this context? Is there a correlation of the beat of the music and the heart beat? What relation exists between tone pitch and emotions?

Dear Wilfried

Emotion is a set of chemical and neural responses forming a different pattern than usual. These answers are produced when the normal brain receives a stimulus that "break" this "balance", triggering the emotion.

Feelings are unique to humans, we can consider them an evolution of emotions. The feeling necessarily presupposes a judgment on a set of self perceptions and feeling this sense resembles a type of metacognition, but in essence, feelings are ideas.

Feelings are more aware that emotion.

It is important to note that emotions and feelings interact, emotions give rise to feelings, however, a negative feeling generates more negative emotions

Music is the universal language . It touches those who listen and runs away from everything we can rationalize . It penetrates our senses and alters our perception magically! .The ability to perceive the ' soul' of the composer in every note or verse takes us to the world of sensations . A music is an act of love into words and sounds !

Nelson,

your answer is wonderful and full of inspirations. Thanks!

Another inspiring reading is the following paper :

Brandt, A., Gebrian, M., & Slevc, L. R. (2012). Music and early language acquisition. Front Psychol, 3, 327. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327

it is available here : http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327/full

Although it is more about the links between the development of language and musical abilities it gives really interesting references about works in ethnomusicology, musical neuroscience...

Worth reading for anybody interested in music cognition/neurosciences

It is extremely interesting what prof. Elias Nelson just wrote, centering the point of the difference between emotions and feelings.

If I may add something, coming myself from studies of acoustics and psycho-acoustics [by physical tests], the difference can also be substantiated in a deviation between what could be considered as "objective" or "subjective".

Where "objective" is the so-called "musical discourse" [or, for a more rugged nomenclature, the musical "object"] — which is nothing else than the song or the score or the sound phenomenon heard, with its objective "emotion" (also sought, in the case of tonal classical compositions, by the composer/researcher). While it's "subjective” [thus, different case by case] the personal emotional framework induced in each listener by the same acoustic "object" — that is to say, the listener's "feeling”.

In this way, the definition given by prof. Elias ["Feelings are unique to humans"], colud be refined into: "Acoustic Feeling attitude is unique to humans, and everyone has a different feeling towards a given musical emotion".

In particular, this psycho-acoustic dipole was studied in some experimental applications. A particularly interesting one is that of the so-called "four quadrants" [copying from the attached publication: Quadrant #1 (Q1) – positive arousal and positive valence; Quadrant #2 (Q2) – positive arousal and negative valence; Quadrant #3 (Q3) – negative arousal and negative valence; and Quadrant #4 (Q4) – negative arousal and positive valence].

You may find some of its complete results in the paper attached below.

—g

Article Musical Emotions: Predicting Second-by-Second Subjective Fee...

Wilfried,

As I wrote in my blog, the connection between music and emotion is incredibly tight. The syncopation and pitch variability directly connect to how humans' voices interact with each other. Music in other words, is processed similarly to a human conversation and thus has the same emotional (contagious) effect. Here are two more studies that came out last week regarding music and emotion. Thank you for reading my blog - feel free to share!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24737625 - the role of religious music in life

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24740381 - related to movement as driven by music

One part of the answer could come from this:

#1 The brain "likes" to decrease entropy (=create hierarchical structures), it saves him energy demands, this produces happy emotions.

#2 Music produces happy emotions because the brain is doing predictions what the next note/tone/word would be, and when the prediction is right (you know the song, the rhythm is "harmonic"), #1 applies (the model your brain has created for the song is correct, needs no changes) it produces happiness.

#2 - this is what Jeff Hawkins argues in 'On Intelligence' book about cortical learning.

On #2 While I think the brain is an intricate pattern-recognition machine, I also think disturbing the pattern is even more "happiness-inducing" because it forces the brain to forge new cortical connections in response to an unexpected design.

Dear Wilfried,

I did participated to a similar thread:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_does_music_affect_our_feelings

I will now read the previous posts.

Regards

Reviews of : The Singing Nearderthalsthe : Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Bodyby Steven Mithen

http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/music1052008/readings/Mithen_etal_response06.pdf

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep03375380.pdf

In small-scale societies people sing and dance as readily and competently as they converse. So why is musical behavior universal? What could be its adaptive value? And

just what is music anyway?

Mithen argues that musicality is a fundamental part of being human, that this capacity is of great antiquity, and that a holistic protolanguage of musical emotive expression predates language and was an essential precursor to it.

As such, both language and music have a common origin in a communication system that Mithen refers to as 'Hmmmm' (Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical and mimetic).

Mithen’s emphasis on the importance of acquiring “emotional intelligence”—the

ability to communicate one’s feelings with face, voice, and body and to decode the

emotional signals of others in increasingly complex social interactions. Mithen

proposes that “vocal grooming” (Aiello and Dunbar 1993) would have been initially

musical more than verbal. Rather than the usual emphasizing of the Machiavellian

competitive advantages of comprehending the intentions and desires of others,

Mithen points out that the emotional content of musical vocalizations would have

been more ‘honest’ than words—contributing to social commitment and expressing,

inducing, and sharing emotion, especially happiness, thereby promoting selectively

advantageous cooperative behavior.

Steven Brown (2000b, p. 297) observed that the two most salient features of music, compared to any other form of vocal communication in nature, are its use of temporal synchronization and pitch-blending. This leads Brown to propose that these cognitive capacities may have evolved specifically for coordination and emotional unification among individuals in a group and thus may be adaptations specifically for group selection.

http://www.mamiwata.com/akuete3.html

A Voodoo ceremony in West Africa is spiritual ritual in which congregants enter an altered state of consciousness through dancing and chanting. The West African priest welcomes the spirits to the ceremony. He prays that they will bless members of the group, enter them and per form wondrous transformations, revelations, and healings.

Happy New Year

to all who have contributed their valuable posts and to all who will do this soon.

Graham,

If we listen to a musical piece in a style totally foreigh then it is sometime in such case impossible to enjoy it at first hearing.  But if we listen to a musical piece that is new but which is within a familiar style then we have more chance to like it at first hearing.  Some hit song or velcro song are enjoyed at first hearing by many people and most of these do have a short live popularity because after only a few hearings it become so predictable that we do not enjoy it anymore.  The classic are those that usually musical piece that needs many hearing before to be fully enjoyable and can remain so a long time because they have multiple layers.  But any piece if listen constantly become too much predictable to be enjoyed.  If we stop listening to hit long enough then our memory erace enough for it to become enjoyable.  In music and in everything too much predictability render something perceptually invisible.  We cannot perceive our the movements of our tongues while talking or perceive all the movement of our body while walking because as adult we have integrated so much that all in it is implicitly predictable and they become invisible out of consciousness because these practice become fully intergrated.  The child learning to talk or learning to walk had to pay attention and for him these actions are consciously done.  So if we are too much familiar with a piece of music , it become invisible and we become emotionally num to it.  The emotion are there in all our action in order to guide our attention but when this attention is not required anymore then the emotions are not necessary anymore and disapear.  So as long there is a need to learn, emotion will be there.  The greatest classic piece have so much depth that even though the upper layer of listening can become num after too much listening, we can return to them all our life because we never reach the lower layers.

http://www.therecord.com/living-story/5474479-music-fighting-alzheimer-s/

For more than 60 years, Bert Rose was a celebrated pianist who played at numerous benefits and weddings and accompanied Ann-Margret, Debbie Reynolds and Brooke Shields at glittering venues.

But now, at age 90, Rose remembers almost none of it. For the past two years he has lived at Autumn Leaves, a suburban Vernon Hills facility for people with dementia, which has stolen his ability to manage the most basic tasks of daily living.

Still, when he sits down at the baby grand piano in the lobby — as he does almost every day — the fog evaporates. Moments earlier, Rose had asked if his wife, who died in 1984, would be visiting. Now, his fingers fly over the keys, retrieving "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "You Are My Sunshine" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" from the recesses of his ravaged brain.

"It's just so heartbreaking," said his daughter, Nancy Berg, looking on. "Music is the only thing he has left."

The music engages other residents as well, who are hand-clapping, toe-tapping and singing along.''

...

Most input to the brain — including speech — is localized, but music is different, activating multiple sites, Kraus said.

"It engages the totality of the brain — centers that process ... sound, memory, attention, language, sight, touch and more. It sparks neural activity within each of these centres and sets them in motion together in a way few other experiences can."

Three musicians came to the senior-living community to interact with some of its most withdrawn residents. One man, who was mostly nonverbal, "started singing in the most beautiful vibrato voice, with so much passion and feeling," said Emily Koi, a flutist from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, CSO's training orchestra.

"Another woman just started singing along to Beethoven. .

Geimer doesn't need any research studies to confirm what she observes every day. That music decreases agitation and provides enjoyment for residents.

"It's the magic therapy from our highest functioning people to those in the very last stages of the disease," she said.

After discounting cultural effects, it seems that the "low-level acoustical characteristics" of music tends to evoke emotions and feelings across different culture. Which a sound engineer may relate to as sound rather than what we would typically think as music. Personally, I think tempo/rhythms seems to affect emotions at a very subliminal level. Where I have in mind march music, the music that accompanies the tango, heavy metal, the rubato of swing etc.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267927156_Music_Induces_Universal_Emotion-Related_Psychophysiological_Responses_Comparing_Canadian_Listeners_To_Congolese_Pygmies

Article Music Induces Universal Emotion-Related Psychophysiological ...

Graham,

your assumption is really obvious and it would be interesting if a psychologist has made a concrete study about the perception of different music styles by psychopaths.

Dear all,

Merry Christmas to you and a happy new year.