When Pharrell Williams attended a class at the Clive Davis Recorded Music Institute at New York University in 2016, he came prepared to dish out constructive criticism to a group of unsuspecting students presenting songs they produced for homework. But when Maggie Rogers presented a demo of "Alaska," it was Williams who was caught off guard: He teared up while Rogers bopped her head to her beats. In 2017, the song—essentially unedited—peaked in the Billboard Top 20.
Chills, tears, lumps in throats, and nostalgia are among the emotional and physical reactions we have to music. And why we have them is a wonderful scientific mystery. Neuroscientists have some ideas of about where these come from—essentially neurological reactions to being pleasantly surprised—but understanding them completely isn't the same kind of urgent problem as, say, finding the cure for cancer (and then making it affordable).
But that doesn't mean it's a useless field of study. Music's ability to trigger moods, emotions, and memories make it a tool that could help treat patients struggling with anxiety or depression, especially when these conditions are related to other physical ailments, and even types of dementia. So listen up.
 The chillsFebruary 11, 2019 |
More than just melodies
When Pharrell Williams attended a class at the Clive Davis Recorded Music Institute at New York University in 2016, he came prepared to dish out constructive criticism to a group of unsuspecting students presenting songs they produced for homework. But when Maggie Rogers presented a demo of "Alaska," it was Williams who was caught off guard: He teared up while Rogers bopped her head to her beats. In 2017, the song—essentially unedited—peaked in the Billboard Top 20.
Chills, tears, lumps in throats, and nostalgia are among the emotional and physical reactions we have to music. And why we have them is a wonderful scientific mystery. Neuroscientists have some ideas of about where these come from—essentially neurological reactions to being pleasantly surprised—but understanding them completely isn't the same kind of urgent problem as, say, finding the cure for cancer (and then making it affordable).
But that doesn't mean it's a useless field of study. Music's ability to trigger moods, emotions, and memories make it a tool that could help treat patients struggling with anxiety or depression, especially when these conditions are related to other physical ailments, and even types of dementia. So listen up.
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50%: Rough proportion of people who experience chills, according to a study from 1980
90%: Proportion of musicians who experience chills
96%: Proportion of chill-experiencing people who feel them from music compared to …
92%: Scenes in movies, plays, ballet, or books
67%: Paintings, photographs, or sculptures
52%: Sports
26%: Parades
3%–5%: Estimated percentage of the population who are musical anhedonics, or people who don't have a physiological response to music
So what's actually going on when we hear music that gives us the chills?
At their basic, evolutionary level, chills are a sign of neutral arousal, Jessica Grahn, a cognitive neuroscientist at Western University in London, Ontario, explained to the Guardian. Usually, higher heart rates, tiny beads of sweat, and goosebumps accompany chills, as the body prepares to respond to a threat.
Music can be thrilling because even though it isn't really a threat, our brains can interpret it that way. Our amygdala, a known center of fear, kicks into gear when we hear somber sounds. Sudden, dramatic changes in harmonies or octaves may startle us, or high notes and falsettos may remind us of wailing—a universally stressful sound we associate with others in need. When our brains recognize that we're perfectly safe and just enthralled, music can be pleasurable, just like food, sex, or drugs, Grahn said.
In the handful of studies that have been done on musical chills, a variety of genres from pop to classical to indie rock have caused participants to feel goosebumps. Not everyone is susceptible to feeling chills, either; estimates suggest that about half of us do, but among musicians that figure can be up to 90%. One study from 2015 found that participants who reported being more open to new experiences were more likely to experience chills, likely because they're able to engage in "musical imagery"—a combination of listening and daydreaming.
Pop quiz What surprising benefit did researchers find when disadvantaged children learned to play a musical instrument? |
"If music confers no survival advantage, where does it come from and why does it work? I suspect that music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties."
—Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in his 1997 book How the Mind Works
Why do tunes from high school dances always take us down memory lane?
Music from our formative, adolescent years tends to stick with us longer than other tunes. There are two main reasons for this. Music is inherently memory-grabbing: the pitches, melodies, and lyrics require the attention of several regions of our brains, which makes it a lot easier to recall later on. Plus, we tend to turn to music when we're already feeling emotional. Those added feelings solidify a tune's place in our minds for years to come.
Then there's the influence of the hyper-social teenage brain. Frank McAndrew, an evolutionary psychologist at Knox College in Illinois, explains that the teenage years were some of the most important in the times of cave-people. Back then, teens hoped to find their mates for life, and were most at risk for getting kicked out of the group if they didn't conform to social norms (which could be fatal).
As a result, modern teenage brains are chock-full of feelings and angst already. Add some music to that emotional mix, and you're setting yourself up for a flood of high-school nostalgia every time that song comes on while you're grocery shopping.
Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with The chills?
The BBC's David Hobson put together a playlist that might give you the chills, which includes Adele, Bach, Rufus Wainwright, and Oasis ("Wonderwall," naturally). It's based on experiments with the chills by musician-turned-neuroscientist Psyche Loui, and the choices feature tingle-inducing dynamics like sudden shifts from soft to loud and the tension release of an appoggiatura, which trigger expectancy violation. But the brain has to do some learning to respond to music; Loui explains how it does that in a TEDx talk.
One of the first large studies to examine the relationship between chills and different types of music also found (pdf) that naloxone—the opioid overdose drug—could stop a person from experiencing them. The theory was that music produces endogenous opioids, or endorphins, which are picked up by the same receptors that pick up opioids. Another study backed up this theory, suggesting that endorphins help us experience the highs and lows of music.
Music to reawaken the unreachable
Music can help us evoke memories we're not able to recall on our own. And its effects can be so strong, they can reanimate patients with advanced dementia who have been otherwise unresponsive. Music and Memory, a New York-based non-profit, works with health care providers to train them in music therapy for their patients. This 2014 documentary about their work, Alive Inside, won the Audience Award for US Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival. However, not all are convinced that this music is really helping patients. In the Atlantic, Steve Swayne, head of Dartmouth College's Department of Music, shares his concern that, in some cases, music may be bringing these patients false or stressful memories.
Music to enhance productivity
If chills happen when your brain is laser-focused on the acoustic surprises of music, it's less able to attend to other tasks at hand. Therefore, the ideal music to listen to music at work is an upbeat tune that your brain can predict. Gaming soundtracks actually check most of these boxes, as Sara Chodosh points out for Popular Science. They're typically quick-tempoed songs that lack lyrics and dramatic crescendos and decrescendos. Lo-fi hip-hop is another increasingly popular source for focus-friendly playlists, for similar reasons. Subconsciously associating the rhythm with forward momentum, Jody Amable writes at JSTOR Daily, "we may gravitate toward [music with a steady beat] as a study aid to 'drive' us toward our goal of finishing our work."
Poll What genre of music is most likely to give you the chills? |
In yesterday's poll about the cloud, 46% of you said the share of your life that's on the cloud is "whatever my devices decide to put there." 📧 Peter writes: "You may not remember it but PCs were supposed to lead to 'the paperless office' but instead we had a multiplication of paper and digital files—tens or hundreds of copies of the same thing. So the cloud is not just about a more favorable business model for startups, it is also a big step toward solving this other problem."
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