Eli Wills

Research Paper
John Bower FAIR201a
Rhythm of Life
Sixty twoo one hundred60-100 beats-per-minute is the average
heart rate for a human above the age of 10. At eighteen weeks old, in
your mothers womb,In your mothers womb at 18 weeks, you are able
to perceive this lub-dub heartbeat rhythm as sound (Bilich). So
though you may be told now that you dont have rhythm because
you cant keep it with your hands, all living humans have rhythm and
have been hearing it since before they are born. A unborn baby at
twenty-five weeks can hear sounds outside of the womb and is
comforted by the familiar sound of its mothers voice as indicated by
its own heart rate slowing down at the sound of it her voice (Bilich).
Once a baby is born, he or sheit gains the ability to perceive abstract
sequences of sound or, , in other words, music; that causes them to
feel so many thingsthings like happiness, sadness, joy and anger.
HSoow how does music have the ability to make us feel emotiondo
humans perceive sound as music and how does music have the ability
to produce an emotional response? The following exploration of the
physiological/neurological processes of hearing music and the
psychology that affects our perception of music can help answer the
question of how music moves us. We will start by looking at what
happens when sound initially reaches the ear.
To fully understand why music can make us feel things we must
first look at how we hearfeel music. At the transient ofWhen a sound is
created by any source (an instrument, a device, someone talking etc.),
air is being compressed and vibrated expanded (Winckel, 170). The
sound travels though space and time by passage of wavelengths into
the listeners outer ear. The diffused vibrating air is directed through
the ear canal into the eardrum, where a few small bones, named the
ossciles,, are vibrate in response to the incoming sound waves. d
(Cope). These bones transmit the vibrations into the inner ear where
they hit small hair cells, called cilia, in the cochlea. (Cope). Around
30,000 hair cells are located in the cochlea. Membranes within the
cochlea bend the hair cells, which causes a neurotransmitter release.
(Cope). This means that the hair cells are connected to nerve fibers
which flood charged molecules into the brain creating electrical
impulses (Cope). Once the electricity hits the brain we have heard
the sound but have not processed it yet. At this point we see the
physiological process of hearing the musical sound turn intostarts to be
effected by neurological processes a neurological process.
The electrical impulses are received in the auditory cortex in the
temporal lobe (Ball, 244). The temporal lobe processes initial acoustic

building blocks such as fundamental pitch frequencies and harmonics,

note durations and loudness. These must then be separated out into
individual instruments or melodies. The results are then compared with
stored musical knowledge and experience (Ball, 245). This shows that
receiving the impulse in the auditory cortex is only the final step in the
recognition of the sound. Our brain says, ah yes, a sound has been
received and it sounds like this but now I must figure out what it
means... This A study done in Montreal, in which music that gave
people chills was experimented on, demonstrates how hearing music
is a whole brain process by studying music that gave people chills:
They brought in their CDs of their own self selected music,
listened to it, got chills while they were having their brains imaged
and, that was confirmed by very physiological measures that were
being taken and then they looked at the brains to see. And now even
though everybody's music was different, in terms of what gave them
chills, some of the brain responses were similar, some of these areas
that we know as neuroscientists are associated with a kind of
reward, sending reward signals to the brain, typically for biologically
important behaviors such as reproduction or food and so forth were
actually being activated by hearing purely instrumental music. This
highly abstract stimulus was jolting the brain in a way that was
surprisingly powerful given that these centers were thought to be,
you know, ancient evolutionary centers for biologically important
kind of behaviors (Patel)

This quote shows that after a sound is heard many different parts
of the brain are activated to help us perceive the sound, which will
determine how it makes us feel. As soon as the primary auditory cortex
receives a musical signal, our subcortical brain, or the ancient
evolutionary centers for biologically important kind of behaviors
discussed above, as talked about in the quote above, areis
alerted.alarmed. The cerebellum, which coordinates muscle activity
(Goldstein, 201), is activated to help detect pulse and rhythm. Another
study of music listening found, :
rRecordings of muscle action potentials on another
instrument, the electro-myograph, show marked increases in
electrical activity in the leg muscles whilst listening to music
even when the subject has been told not to move (Storr, 25).
So not only do you have rhythm, but also your body wants you
to dance even when you dont know you want to! Our thalamus is
alarmed to check if the sound we hear means danger (, also known as
the fight or flight mechanismthe flight or fight mechanism) (Ball, 244).
The thalamus then communicates with the amygdala (the minds
emotional center of the brain) to produce an emotional response- for
example the tension we feel in horror movies when the strings are
playing their high pitched, fast-paced music (Ball, 244). This
neurological pathway shows that when a person hears music; neurons
all over the brain are trying to figure out how we should react to the

music. A fantastic example of listeners reaction to music is found back

in the May of 1913.
In May of 1913, tThe first listeners of Igor Stravinskys Rite of
Spring started had a very intense reaction. In fact, they started a a
riot within the first couple minutes of the performance (Cope). Why did
this happen? This occurred, on a neurological level, because their
brains had never had to process the kind of dissonant music that
Stravinsky was utilizing in his orchestration. (Cope). Dissonant
soundschords are those that are not in harmony, or in other words, do
not sound nice when we hear them. When we hear such sound, just
like loud sounds, a dosage of dopamine is released into the brain,
which in small amounts is fine but too much can make you do
something like riot at the sound of music. (think heavy metal mosh
pits as well)(Cope). Something else interesting happened with the
audiences of the Rite of Spring. When they heard the music for a
second time, they loved it,. They praisinged Stravinsky for his genius
work! What changed? Well they, in a sense, got used to the new
sounds. This occurred do to a functionis called brain plasticity.
(Cope). OurBrain plasticity occurs when our cortical fugal network,
monitors sounds and tunes neurons to better hear the sound like a
radio transmitter (Cope). Our brain is able to adapt to the noisenew
noise due to that neurological tuning. The first audience of the Rite of
Spring had never had the experience of that kind of music. But once
they had, the music gave them a different feeling. Through my
research I found that there are many different psychological processes
happening while we experience music However the neurological
happenings in the brain while listening to music are only part of the
perception equation, there are also psychological processes taking
place.
Psychologists believe that as people become more familiar
with a particular genre of music- through so called passive
exposure, active listening, or explicit training- they develop internal
representations, sorted in long term memory which provide a
hieratically organized framework into which new sequences of events
can be fitted (Clarke, 71)

This explains what was happening , psychologically , what

happened to the listeners of the Rite of Spring after their brains had
adapted to the new sounds. The listeners developed internal
representations of the sounds after hearing them and as a result,
when they heard the song again their brains didnt have the same
reaction as the first time. The perception of music, as described in the
quote above, can be organized into a hierarchical organized
framework. This is the idea that our thought process goes through
frameworks that have different levels of categories and subcategories,
to be able to make a decision about something (Goldstein, 254). In the
case of music, sound would be the top category, then the different

things that make sound, (such as music, ) then different genres would
subcategorize music, then the instruments used in those genres then
depending on our familiarity with music, the keys, then the chords,
then notes, then grouping, metric structure, time-span reduction, and
then pitch, frequency and amplitude and so on (Storrt, 156). These
frameworks are connected to other frameworks such as emotions. A
quote from Oscar Wilde illustrates the hierarchical frameworkis
process:
"In playing Chopin I feel as if I am weeping over sins I
hadn't committed and morning over losses that were not my
own" (Huron). When we hear music like Chopins, which is usually in a
minor key and full of dissonant chords, we associate it with sadness
even though something sad isnt actually happing to us.
Because of the sad sounds of the Chopins music (full of minor
keys and dissonant chords), the hierarchical frameworks of our thought
process tells our brain (in combination with neurological processes
described earlier) that something is wrong. But somewhere in the
framework our mind also realizes that everything is actually okay and
we are just simply hearing sounds that we perceive as sad Due to the
interwoven frameworks of our thinking, we are able categorize the
creation of Chopins abstract sad sounds as music being played and
not an actual threat to us (Huron). Other Another psychological
processes are also at work along with hierarchical frameworks that
help us produce emotional responses.
Emotional contagion, which correlates with the environment in
which we experience music. , is emotional contagion. This is a
process in which the listener perceives the performers emotion and
mimics this expression internally. (Clarke, 84). For example if a
musician is laughing and having a really great time on stage, the
audience may copy their energy and feel happier while watching.
However we still feel emotion even when we dont physically see the
performer. This happens in evaluative conditioning in which the
music evokes emotion because the music often occurred at the same
time as another positive or negative event (Clarke, 84.). Your
wedding song will always have a sentimental meaning to you
because of evaluate conditioning. Implicit knowledge, or the things we
know but cannot explain how we know, effect on the listener is
described in the following quote; Semantic meaning also associates
meaning with music in peoples heads. Particular musical materials
may become associated with specific meaningslargely dependent
upon the consistency with which materials have been used by
musicians and the listeners familiarity with the style. (Clarke, 84).
For example brassBrass has been historically used in the military and
therefore may be perceived as heroic and masculine. So when we hear
the horn section in the James Bond theme song we may automatically
assume associate the masculinity of Bonds character (Clarke, 84).

Listeners, who are familiar with music being played, are found to listen
to the music with a critical ear. (Clarke, 67). They find enjoyment in
a kind of acoustical chess, in which the aim of listening is to identify
and follow the sequence of moves and to take pleasure in
appreciating the cleverly wrought structures (Clarke 67). This can be
seen as the opposite of what happened to the audience of the first
performance of the Rite of Spring. Listeners are familiar with the
musicWhen you listen to music you are familiar with you are not and
so instead of their brain trying to process new sounds, the brain
already knows how to feel about these sounds and can now analyze it
for its artistic attributes. I wondered when I first heard the story of the
Rite of Spring how the musicians playing the piece reacted to
itListeners who are familiar with the music they are listening to go
through a different experience than listeners who are new to the music
but what do those playing the music experience? .
I was not able to find any information on the first performers of
the Rite of Spring, though I am sure that they had to adapt to the
new sounds as well. I did discover something intriguing about the
psychology of performing that I would like to touch on briefly.
Researchers have found that one of the reasons people perform music
is because they feel self-actualization or flow while playing. (Clarke,
80). Flow can be considered as being in control of your
environment., Ffor example,; a performer controls the production of
sound, which blocks out other auditory distractions and focuses
attention. So when you play music you not only experience everything
a listener does but you are also being impacted by flow (Clarke, 80).
There is much more research on how playing music makes us feel and
even more on how society and culture plays a part on how music
makes us feel, . Bbut this paper was just focusesing on the
physiological, neurological and psychological processes of hearing the
music and how those things lead to the eventual emotions we feel
while listening to music.
Feeling emotion from music is a very human characteristic. We
all have ears to hear, and brains to processbrains to process and minds
to make sense. Our reaction to music can evoke scared and angry
emotions if the sounds of the music are loud and unknown to us. Music
can also create joyous and happy emotions if the sounds are familiar
and soothing to the ear. Though we may not all feel the same things
when we do listen to music, we are still feeling. David Huron has a
statement, which I really enjoy and believe to be true in addition to all
the things talked about in this paper,
I think it's the very fact that humans are such social animals
and that we're so attuned to the emotions of each other that we
have this kind of radar system of trying to understand, pull out all of
this emotional information from just listening to these sounds that
these then carryover into this abstract realm that we call music.

All of our hearts are beating to the rhythm of life that without, we
could feel nothing.

Bibliography
Ball, Philip. The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do without It.
New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print. I read chapter 9 and 10 out of this book. These
chapters talked about what parts of the brain we use for music and how music
conveys and elicits emotion. The book had tons of sources in the back and the
authors writing was easy to understand.
Bilich, Karen A. "Can My Baby Hear before She's Born?" Parents.com. Meredith
Women's Network, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. This is a website I used to find out
information about unborn babies. I used it only in the first paragraph when
talking about babies heartbeats. The website is focused on giving parents facts
about their babies.
Clarke, Eric F., Nicola Dibben, and Stephanie Pitts. Music and Mind in Everyday
Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print. I read chapters 5 and 6 of this book. These
chapters talked about hearing and listening to music and how people use music
to produce an affect. The book used real world musical examples and analyzed
them psychologically which was very helpful for my research.
Cope, David, Diana Deutsch, Anne Fernald, and Jonah Lehrer. "Musical
Language." Audio blog post. Radiolab. WNYC, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2015.
<http://www.radiolab.org/story/91512-musical-language/>.
This was an incredible podcast that interviewed Professor Dianna Deutsch who
specializes in music psychology, Professor Anne Fernald who researches the
connection between music and language and Professor David Cope who created

a musical software that can compose music. I found both Diannas and Annes
interviews very insightful and learned a lot about the Rite of Spring happening
from this podcast.
Goldstein, E. Bruce. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and
Everyday Experience. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. This
is a psychology textbook which I use for my cognitive psychology class. It helped
me understand the hierarchical framework theory and some parts of the brain.
Huron, David, Prof. ": Why Do Listeners Enjoy Music That Makes Them Weep?"
Audio blog post. Music and The Brain. Library of Congress, 29 Apr. 2010. Web. 14
Nov.
2015. <http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_huron.html>
This podcast was an interview of Professor David Huron of Ohio State University
and he talked about musics interaction with the brain and how that elicits
emotion. His lab has done a lot of research on why humans listen to sad music
even when we usually try and stay away from sad things.
Patel, Aniruddh D., Dr., and Esther J. Burnham. "The Music of Language and the
Language of Music." Audio blog post.Music and The Brain. Library of Congress, 7
Nov. 2008. Web. 14 Nov. 2015.
<http://www.loc.gov/podcasts/musicandthebrain/podcast_aniruddhpatel.html>

This podcast was an interview of musician and neuroscientist Aniduddh

Patel. In the interview he talks about how closely related music and
language are and how science plays a role in helping uncover more of
the relationship.

Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind. New York: Free, 1992. Print.
I read chapter two of this book which talked about musics interaction with both
the brain and body. This book had a lot of good information on how music has
shaped us as humans just as long as language has and what that means as we
hear music today.
Straus, Joseph Nathan. Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2011. Print. This book focused on how the idea of disability interacts
with musicians and their art. I read a small section out of this book which had to
do with music cognition and normal hearing which provided good information on
how we hear music as part of a hierarchical structure.
Winckel, Fritz, and Thomas Binkley. Music, Sound and Sensation: A Modern
Exposition. New York: Dover Publications, 1967. Print. This book talked mostly
about the science behind sound sensation. I read the 10th chapter out of the book
which had to do with the effect of music on the listener.