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| Music and emotions explained (source from Learn Piano | Joytunes Blog - JoyTunes Blog) |
Music, a combination of tones and voices, has been widely used by varied civilizations in certain usages, including ceremonies, celebrations, traditions, and treatments. In certain study, like that published in journal of PNAS, the evidence of music can be observed in the way that enhances or inhibits dopamine during listening to some music. Another study has also reported that when someone is listening to music, he/ she tends to have brain stimulation, in which the amygdala (the area within the brain that is associated to emotion and reward) also stimulated by the presence of increased blood flow. But, how exactly it happens?
Emotional Responses to Music
During the listening to music either it is modern or classical music, the audio wave that emits to the ear is being absorbed by the body. By the time the body feels the audio wave, it starts to provide physical responses such as adjusting the vibration of the atoms of the body. However, in other side, which is about the subjective feeling, people tend to have debates about how can music affect the emotional features of someone. These debates often in form of music psychology that scientifically speaking, arguments about what genre of music could influence anger, sadness, joy, or motivation. Although certain studies have reported that music was able to affect the heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, skin conductance, and even more, skin temperature, it still remains unclear.
This confusing phenomenon has been unclear until researchers from the University of Turku unraveled the biological mechanisms about the response of human body during listening to the music. The scientists investigated the way of brain function in responding the listened music by recruiting 102 research subjects. Their data which were the brain scan of the subjects were collected via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These results were published in Cerebral Cortex Journal.
Apparently, certain parts of the brain have responded differently to certain music. For instance, the auditory cortex responds the acoustic parts of the music such as rhythm that are indicated by the presence of cortex activation via the fMRI scan. On the other hand, the other activation which is the motor cortex, is associated to the responses of the listener after hearing the music. So, it means that strong emotions that are based on the motor cortex can actually be tuned by using certain part of music, and in this case such as rhythm.
Traditionally speaking, people could have been thinking that classical music can help us to focus or concentrate in certain jobs, and sometimes it is used as medical therapy during traumatic injuries and pregnancies. Furthermore, based on the study, the part of the music such as rhythm, drum beats, guitar melody or bass melody is the one that is responsible in affecting the emotions, not the lyrics of the song (perhaps).