Music has the power to evoke a range of emotions, including joy, sadness, and anger. According to a study published on April 4 in iScience, the patterns in music can make our hearts beat faster or even make us feel like our stomachs are "flipping."
Chord sequences, when played simultaneously with three or more notes that deviate from people's expectations, appear to trigger intense sensations around the heart, while those following expected patterns can feel like a visceral punch.
"Music has a unique power to evoke emotions that cannot be expressed in words," said Tatsuya Daikoku, the lead author of the paper and a researcher at the University of Tokyo in Japan. "It is not just an auditory experience but also a bodily experience. When music plays, sometimes our bodies tremble, sometimes we feel a warm flow surrounding our hearts—these emotions are difficult to express in words."
Researchers have demonstrated that music can elicit strong emotional responses, but pianist and composer Daikoku and colleagues wanted to understand which parts of the body would perceive these emotions. To investigate, they first analyzed 890 songs from the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 using analytical and statistical software.
The software judged the sequences of chords and the degree of surprise and uncertainty between them. For example, some sequences consisted of a low surprise, low uncertainty chord followed by another low surprise, low uncertainty chord, while others comprised a low surprise, low uncertainty chord followed by a low uncertainty but high surprise chord.
Based on this, the researchers created 92 music clips of four-chord sequences, each representing one of eight possible combinations of surprise and uncertainty. They then had 527 volunteers listen to the different combinations of chord patterns while observing an online outline of a human body.
Volunteers were asked to click on the parts of their bodies that they felt a response in within 10 seconds of hearing the music. Afterwards, researchers conducted an online survey to gauge emotional responses to the chords.
They found that the major differences in bodily sensations after hearing three chords following an easily predictable pattern were largely related to the changes in the fourth chord. If the fourth chord followed the expected pattern, people felt sensations in their abdomen, but if it deviated from the expected pattern, sensations were felt around the heart.
In terms of emotions, when chord progressions followed predictable patterns, participants exhibited greater calmness, relaxation, satisfaction, nostalgia, and empathy. Even when the first three chords could be predicted, and the fourth chord was not surprising, participants generally felt less embarrassment or anxiety compared to other chords.
Daikoku stated that these findings "reveal that music touches not only our ears but also our bodies and minds." He hopes that this understanding will one day lead to better interventions for mental health.
