Marissa Rials 1

Marissa Rials
Eng. 1201.A05
Professor Veronica Jayne
7 October 2014
How Musical Stimulation Affects the Human Brain and Emotions
Music is a common element in civilizations throughout the world. From third-world to
first-world countries, music holds a great weight of importance in society and is used for a wide
variety of activities ranging from ritualistic to recreational. Certain musical genres are
stereotyped to induce certain emotions upon its listener. For example, people associate heavy
rock and metal music to inducing feelings of anger or sadness, and in contrast, classical music
producing enhanced neurological or calming effects in the listener. Studies have proven that
music does have a significant impact upon the human brain, as well as the listeners emotions.
Studies have also shown that musics ability to produce activity in the brain which can help
prevent brain atrophy and to help treat diseases as well (Koelsch). Despite the vast amount of
credible and scientific evidence, there are still many aspects of this new field of study which
needs to be further investigated and researched to truly understand the true potential which music
possesses. The lack of mainstream interest and popularity of this field remains to be relative
issue in the process of furthering of research in this relatively new study. The resulting issue is
the deprivation of new neurological innovations which could be utilized in the treatment of
diseases, mental disorders, and even in peoples everyday life. Music does affect the brain, our
emotions, behavior, and even our physiological condition, but it is not commonly talked about.
Marissa Rials 2

There are many people out there, including myself at times, who want to believe that we
are in complete control of ourselves; our emotions, actions, reactions, behavior, and mood. But
there are scientists who can prove that regardless of our mental will power, music still produces
activity in the brain (in most cases) whether we like it or not. But, there are many differences that
contribute to variations in the brain activity produced as a response to music. Just because
someone may listen to a certain genre of music, it does not necessarily make them more inclined
to act or behave in a way that is stereotyped to the genre. For example, one person could listen to
heavy metal music and feel angry or sad afterwards, while some may just get a headache. While
others who enjoy heavy metal may actually find they experience an absence of negative feelings
and may actually feel calm or happy afterwards. Each individuals reaction is different to a
certain extent, which is seen in the variations of brain activity between musicians and non-
musicians or in the emotional responses seen in people who have depression versus non
depressed patients.
There are also many groups who would argue that musics effect on the brain is caused
by the musics content more than anything else. Which is true in a sense, as seen in the
experiment were louder dance music would increase customers pleasure and arousal levels
which correlates with their shopping behaviors, the amount of money spent, and the amount of
time that they spent in the store (Morrison, Gan and Dubelaar). But at the same time, another
experiment showed that people diagnosed with depression often show that they cannot
appropriately identify their feelings or the feelings of others.
One experiment focused on how music can produce pleasurable brain activity, referred to
in this experiment as chills, similar to the brain activity associated with the rewarding and
pleasurable effects of drugs, sex, and consummation of food. They conducted a positron
Marissa Rials 3

emission tomography study (PET) to determine what parts of the brain would activate to produce
this pleasurable response to music. The participants in the study consisted of musicians who have
had at least eight years of musical training. The reason behind having only musicians as
participants was not because they can experience chills regularly to certain types of music, in
contrast to non-musicians, who may experience chills but in a more sporadic sense (Blood and
Zatorre).
They had the PET scans working in tandem with the MRI scans to measure the
participants heart rate, electromyogram, respiration depth, electrodermal response, and skin
temperature. All of the data collected from the PET and MRI scans were then plugged into
mathematical equations. The information produced from these equations was then graphed using
variables of x, y, and z which was used to produce graphing coordinates. They used a rating scale
for emotional intensity ranging from 0 to 10, 10 being most intense. The average rating of chill
intensity for subject selected music was 4.5:10, the average rating of emotional intensity was
7.4:10, and the average rating of pleasantness was about 4.4:5. During intervals when chills
increased, the brain activity presented similar patterns of reward circuitry, correlating with
previously discovered information from other studies which focused on both human and animals
brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus in response to euphoric drugs, particularly
cocaine and heroin. But unlike the neurological rewards of drugs, sex, and food, music does not
serve as instinctual purpose in self-preservation, procreation, or as a means to satisfy a drug
addiction which further proves the importance of the power held by music (Blood and Zatorre).
These results also support a similar idea, that music can be used very beneficial to
improve our physical and emotional wellbeing. Stefan Koelsch discusses similar findings about
how the amygdala and limbic structures create an emotional response in the brains pleasure
Marissa Rials 4

center to music. Even though these emotions may not be authentic, they are emotional responses
none the less. Stefan also says that there is still more information to uncover about how music is
able to activate areas of the brain that create a neurological response.
Music is also capable evoking emotions but it is also able to provide its listeners with
emotional, social, and physiological benefits. Music acts as a platform for social activity and
social assimilation. People who play and/or listen to music have the opportunity to form social
groups sharing similar interests based on music. As a result, members of these groups tend to feel
a sense of social unity and belongingness. Social unity is often underestimated but the reality is
that people who become more socially assimilated and involved in society inadvertently reduce
their levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and anger. People often experience these benefits
because they are less likely to isolate and also experience an enhanced sense of purpose by
joining and being a part these groups. Music can also provide therapeutic, medical solutions and
physiological benefits. Music is used as therapeutic tool for diseases such as Parkinsons and
depression, in addition to, providing medical benefits for people who have had strokes. Music
can be very beneficial as a way to keep regions of the brain active, in turn, prevent regions from
atrophying and to help our brain to function more efficiently. (Koelsch)
Different components of music also contribute to musics ability to effect and produce
activity in the brain. A PET study was conducted to show which regions of the brain produced
activity in response to the different components of music; tempo, melody, meter, and pattern.
The procedure used in this study determined the activity found for each component tasks by
comparing the tasks brain activity to the brain activity recorded from the rest trial. The
information from this study shows that different components of music do indeed activate
different regions in the brain. The brain processing of pattern involves auditory information
Marissa Rials 5

processing. The pattern task produced activity in the right areas of the temporal gyrus, the
superior temporal gyrus, and the transverse temporal gyrus. But unlike the brains processing of
pattern, meter is processed first through auditory perception regions to then be processed more
thoroughly by other sub-systems. The meter task produced activity in the right hemispheric
regions of the inferior fontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus. Meter activates
very few, if any, motor-related brain functions. Meter can be best described as a repetitive
mathematical pattern of fractions going from , 1/2, , 1, and so on. Tempo is concerned more
so with the change in the rate of sound per unit, time, in music. The brain processing of tempo
involves a processing of somatosensory and premotor information by subservient neurological
mechanisms. The tempo task produced activity in the right inferior parietal cortex, the
supramarginal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, right insula, right middle frontal gyrus, and
the precentral frontal gyrus. The melody task did not produce very much activity in the prefrontal
or frontal brain regions, but melody did produce brain activity in the right insula, right
postcentral gyrus, right claustum, right superior temporal gyrus, right posterior and anterior
cerebellum, the crus I region, and both lobules VI and V regions. The activity that appears in the
crus I region is involved with in the processing of sound, the lobules region is involved with the
processing of emotions, and the cerebellum brain region is involved with processing the pitch
information of melody. (Thaut, Trimarchi and Parsons)
They also found that musicians tend to interact with music by doing repetitive motions
and their brain activity consisted of higher-level representations in the temporal, occipital, and
frontal brain regions. The musicians brain activity predominantly registered activity in their left
superior, middle, and inferior temporal cortex brain regions. In contrast, non- musicians tended
to listen more passively to music and recruited more often from their sensory- motor, putamen,
Marissa Rials 6

caudate and cerebellar brain functions. Non-musicians also predominately registered brain
activity in the right superior and middle temporal cortex regions. (Thaut, Trimarchi and Parsons)
The presence or absence of mental illness also plays a variable in the effects and
influence of music. A study was conducted in order to try to identify how people with depression
process emotions involved with musical, facial, and vocal stimuli differently than people who do
not have depression. Emotions were categorized into four different categories; peacefulness,
used as the neutral control emotion and the other emotions were happiness, sadness, and
threatening. Throughout the experiment, the depressed group tended to contribute negative
emotions to neutral stimuli, they consistently rated experiencing higher emotional intensity
levels, and they repeatedly proved to be less accurate in their ability to identify their emotions
and neutral stimuli significantly more than those in the control group. The results show that some
people are more influenced by stimulus, are more vulnerable to experiencing or experience a
more potent reaction to stimuli, like music, than other people (Naranjo, Kornreich and
Campanella).
So musics effects can be described, in part, as being determined more or less by the
listener depending on the listeners neurological makeup. Similarly, this idea can be seen in the
childhood game telephone. The game begins with one person creating a message which is then
whispered from one kid to the next around the circle. When the message makes it full circle back
to the originator, the message has been changed or somehow distorted. This mental picture can
describe the similar process shown when a musician composes their music containing a message
or meaning they are trying to convey, then whenever someone else listens to it, the listener
interprets a completely different message or meaning.
Marissa Rials 7

But there is actually validity behind the idea that sad music can actually induce sadness to
its listener. This idea is tested in two experiments; both experiments gauged the participants
emotional responses to sad sounding self-selected and to unfamiliar music. The first experiment
showed that participants felt sadness more than other emotions in response to the sad self-
selected music; similarly, participants experienced feeling positive emotions in response to
having listened to the more positive, elating music which was used to help bring the participants
out of the induced state of sadness from the experiment (which successfully worked). In the
second experiment, participants were evaluated on their emotional reactions, how their empathy
levels correlated to their emotional response and reaction to music (Vuoskoski and Eerola).
In this experiment they found that the intensity of the music did had an effect on the
participants emotional state and that more empathetic people were more susceptible to be
emotionally effected by music and were also more biased towards sadness in music. This shows
a direct correlation between ones empathy level and their susceptibility to musically induced
emotional states. They also concluded that a persons susceptibility to musically induced states is
not substantially influenced by the persons gender. The participants often associated sad self-
selected music to sad or unspecified memories more than just feeling sad and participants also
found that the sad music was more pleasant than the self-selected sad and neutral music which
proves that musics effect is determined by relevancies found in the music by listener. These
personal relevancies include the listeners emotional state, the relevancy of the lyrics to the
listener, or by real/ imaginary memories brought to mind by the music. (Vuoskoski and Eerola)
Another study tested the participants emotional response to artwork and music as well as
whether their emotional response would influence if they liked the art. During the first
experiment, they used commercial video clips that included different music styles categorized as
Marissa Rials 8

being happy, sad, or neutral sounding. Each category was separated into block segments played
in an order of images being positive-neutral-negative and vice versa. After participants watched
the video clips, they rated each clip and were surveyed how the clips made them feel, what
emotions the viewed the music portray, and if they were familiar with the sound. The
participants responses were then evaluated on a bipolar sad-happy rating scale ranging from
zero to six. The results in experiment show when people saw the neutral clips after seeing the sad
clips they reported feeling happier, and similarly felt happier after seeing the happy clips in
comparison to the previously watched neutral clip. The participants thought the happy sounding
music sounded happier than the sad music and participants were also more familiar with the
positive, happy sounding clips but listeners emotional reactions to the music were not
influenced by their familiarity with the music (Hunter, Schellenberg and Griffith).
The second experiment used a similar method were they used six video clips with
conflicting emotional cues; the music containing a fast tempo to produce happy emotional cues
and the music containing a slow tempo to produce the sad emotional cues. Ironically, the happier
video clips showed to actually provoke more sad emotions than the neutral pictures, and the sad
pictures provoked even more intensified sad emotions in participants. People tended to like clips
depending on their mood that they were in (Hunter, Schellenberg and Griffith). This makes a lot
of sense because personally when Im in a bad mood I dont want to listen to peppy, pop music
and when Im happy I dont want to listen to death metal.
Music can also impact a stores atmosphere and influence a customers emotional state
and overall shopping behavior. There are many aspects in a stores atmosphere used to create a
desirable shopping environment for a customer including the stores layout, lighting, color
schemes, aroma, music, and how loud the music is played. These factors are determine how long
Marissa Rials 9

the customer will likely stay in the store, if the customer will buy more, the amount they will
spend, and how the customer may respond to employee/ company recommendations. Multiple
studies presented in this article show that customers will respond more favorably to stimulations
like arousing scents and music. Aromas, such as vanilla, are commonly associated with pleasant
feelings and tend to enhance positive feelings. Arousal and pleasure are the two emotions that
influence a customers willingness to buy and the higher these feelings are- the more the
customer will be likely to buy.
An experiment was designed to determine how the genre of music, the volume of the
music, and the absence/ presence of aromas can influence a real retail stores setting and their
customers behavior. They used the customer surveys, which were administered to the customers
as they were leaving, to determine the customers pleasure levels, how those levels influenced
the customers shopping behaviors (i.e. approach-avoidance), how long the customer stayed in
the store, how much they had spent, and the customers satisfaction level. The surveys showed
that loud music produced a higher intensity of arousal elevation more than aroma but arousal can
only produces positive results by enhancing pleasure. But when music and aroma together in
large doses, they greatly enhance pleasure and positively influence the customers satisfaction
level. This experiment shows that music has a direct influence on the customers time and money
spent in the store (Morrison, Gan and Dubelaar).
These case studies have clearly shown that music can affect a persons brain, emotions,
behaviors, and physiological decision. Although some people may be skeptical, the fields of
neuroscience and psychology have shown that there is validity behind the findings because
similar experiments have produced similar, if not the same, results. Regardless of someones
willingness to accept the idea that external sources can involuntarily influence someones
Marissa Rials 10

emotions and behaviors, they cannot discredit the facts and evidence supporting this idea. The
majority of these experiments used the data they had collected to then plug into a series of
mathematical equations, by doing so they cut out the grey area of open interpretation and
validates the information they discovered.
Music possesses abilities which are not commonly discussed or understood by many
people because it is a fairly new field of study. But research has shown clear indicators to show
that music has the potential to become a very effective and beneficial therapeutic tool. Which
begs to question, if musical effects were researched and studied more, what is the full potential
of the unknown benefits presented by music? We may never know this answer to its full extent
because this line of study is being put on the back burner in mainstream researching. This is an
unfortunate truth that we are depriving ourselves from these potential benefits, but everyone has
the ability to change this present day reality.
Works Cited
Blood, Anne and Robert Zatorre. "Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with Activity in
Brain Regions Implicated with Reward and Emotion." 25 Sept. 2001. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States. Web. 19 September 2014.
<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.191355898>.
Hunter, Patrick G., E. Glenn Schellenberg and Andrew T. Griffith. "Misery Loves Company: Mood-
Congruent Emotional Responding to Music." Emotion 11.5 (2011): 1068-1072. Web. 25 Sept.
2014. <http://erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/HunterSchellenbergGriffith2011.pdf>.
Koelsch, Stefan. "Towards a Neural Basis of Music-Evoked Emotions." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14.3
(2010): 131-137. Web. 25 Sept. 2014. <http://www.stefan-
koelsch.de/papers/Koelsch_2010_TICS_music_emotion.pdf>.
Morrison, Micheal, et al. "In- Store Music and Aroma Influences on Shopper Behavior and Satisfaction."
Journal of Business Research 64.6 (2011): 558-564. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.
<http://airqtools.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/music-and-aroma1.pdf>.
Marissa Rials 11

Naranjo, C., et al. "Major Depression is Associated with Impaired Processing of Emotion in Music as well
as in Facial and Vocal Stimuli." Journal of Affective Disorders 128.3 (2011): 243-251. Web. 25
Sept. 2014.
Thaut, M.H., P.D. Trimarchi and L.M. Parsons. "Human Brain Basis of Musical Rhythm Perception:
Common and Distinct Neural Subtrates for Meter, Tempo, and Pattern." Brain Sciences 4.2
(2014): 428-452. Web. 20 Sept. 2014. <http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/4/2/428>.
Vuoskoski, Jonna K. and Tuomas Eerola. "Can Music Really Make You Sad? Indirect Measures of Affective
States Induced by Music and Autobiographical Memories." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity,
and the Arts 6.3 (2012): 204-213. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.