Why We Enjoy Music?

From generation to generation, we’ve all enjoyed some kind of music from opera, pop, rap, edm and many more. But have you ever wondered why do we enjoy music? That’s what I’m trying to answer today by giving you scientific explanations on why we enjoy music.
It doesn’t make any sense from an evolutionary perspective that music makes us feel emotions. Why would our ancestors care about music? Notwithstanding many who would argue the opposite, it’s not necessary for survival.

“C or C-sharp is very rarely a matter of life and death,” says Jean-Julien Aucouturier, a neuroscientist at the French Institute of Sciences in Paris who is studying music and emotion. “Beethoven or Lady Gaga — like them or not — it’s not something you have to scream or run away from.”

For decades, it’s a question that has fascinated scientists: Why does something as abstract as music elicit such strong emotions? It is quite likely our music passion was just an accident. We originally evolved emotions to help us navigate dangerous (fear) worlds and social (joy) situations. And, somehow, musical composition tones and rhythms stimulate similar areas of the brain.

“It could be the case that it evolved serendipitously, but once it evolved it became really important,” Said Robert Zatorre, a McGill University neuroscientist.

Here are a few theories on how that happened.
Our brains love patterns and music is a pattern.

Studies have shown that our brains produce dopamine when we listen to music, which in turn makes us happy. For one study published for Nature Neuroscience, led by Zatorre, researchers found that the release of dopamine is highest when a piece of music hits an emotional high and the listener experiences “chills”— the sensation of excitement and awe from the spine-tingling.

Music is a pattern. When we listen we always anticipate what melodies, harmonies and rhythms may come next. “So if I hear a chord progression — a one chord, a four chord, and a five chord — probably I know that the next chord is going to be another one chord, because that’s prediction,” says Zatorre. “It’s based on my past experience.”

This is why we usually don’t like music styles that we don’t know about. When we are unfamiliar with a music style we have no basis for predicting its trends. (Zatorre cites jazz as one style of music that many strangers have difficulty latching on). We get bored because we can’t predict musical trends. Through our communities we learn what music represents sounds. The rest is just random noise.

Our brain thinks that music is a speech.
These theories may define why we feel joy from music, but don’t explain the full range of music that can create emotions.

Once we hear a piece of music it latches its rhythm on us in a process called entrainment. If the music is fast-paced, our breathing patterns and heartbeats can increase to match the rhythm.
The brains can then perceive the stimulation as excitement. Research found that the more enjoyable the music sounds, the greater the level of entrainment is achieved.
Another theory is that music latches to the brain regions attuned to speech — that conveys all our emotions.

“It makes sense that our brains are really good at picking up emotions in speech,” says Aucouturier of the French Institute of Science. It’s essential to understand whether those around us are happy, sad, angry or frightened. A lot of that detail is in the sound of a person’s voice. Higher-pitched voices sound more contented while there’s more fear of warbling voices.
And since we appear to mimic the feelings we hear in others, if the music imitates happy expression, the listener will be happy too.

But in the end music is music, we always hear them to comfort ourselves, and if you’re happy listening to them then that’s all that matters.

Author: Nagata Amaranggana
Source: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/2/4/10915492/why-do-we-like-music