Music has filled human lives throughout each day since the start of human existence. Each person has music that not just resonates with them but serves as part of their identity, fueling their energy and mood throughout the day.
Music activates almost every part of the limbic system, such as the hippocampus and the amygdala, which cause the brain to react to music and brings people emotions through memories tied to the music. This part of the brain is what brings people pleasure, motivation, and triggers our reward system not only for our brain but our bodies as well. This reaction from the body is the reason we want to clap and move our bodies to the sound of music.
Music’s ties to emotions are deeper than associating memories or thoughts with a song; major chords and notes are perceived as happy or cheerful and minor chords sound sad or melancholy. This concept is also similarly applied to rhythm. When the rhythm of a song is fast, your brain associates it with high energy vs. slow rhythms, which seem less energetic and even less joyful. The foundations of music trigger a reaction through our bodies, and when paired with lyrics, this makes music resonate with both our body and mind.
Patrick Whalen, a Harvard medical school lecturer, suggests that the reason behind why human emotions swing and sway when listening to music. Whalen suggests that most mammals had to rely on hearing and smell as defensive mechanisms activating hyper-attentiveness. In our automatic nervous system, our brain signals whether a sound or song is negative or positive. Whalen explains that, “These factors are among the reasons why our heart rate goes up when we hear the infamous music from Jaws, or why experimental music or heavy metal might make us feel uncomfortable if we’re not used to it.”
To test Whalen’s statement, I asked Casa Grande Junior Tayven Calhoun how different genres of music change or impact his mood. He responded with: “I’d say when listening to music I enjoy it keeps me in a comfortable mood or the mood I want to be in. When I listen to upbeat music I feel more energy and my mood gets raised, but when I listen to slow music I feel relaxed with little energy.” When I asked Tayven how he feels when listening to music he doesn’t enjoy, he said, “Genres of music that I don’t enjoy like metal make me feel uncomfortable, similarly to how I feel when I’m somewhere that I don’t feel like I belong.” The parallels between Patrick Whalen’s statement and the student’s answers to these questions are astonishing.
The human brain evolved indirectly to have a deep and personal relationship with music. Sensory instincts that were originally developed for life or death situations and having a profound impact on the way humans perceive verbal/vocal cues is proof that our brain and bodies change and develop in many ways from a single cause for evolution.
