This is your brain on music

Picture the scene. You’re somewhere in East Africa. Perhaps Sudan. You live in a group of about 25 people, most of whom you’re related to.

There are no signs of civilisation because civilisation is yet to exist. You’re there about 200,000 years ago.

You’re scanning the horizon. The trees, plants, birds and animals that are typical you barely register.

Your eye is drawn to a plant you’ve not seen before. Coloured berries. Similar enough to berries you’ve seen before that made for good eating.

But different. New.

Primitive-you notices the berries because they’re unusual. They diverge from homeostasis. Homeostasis is the balance of things as we’ve come to expect them to be.

Our brains are hardwired by evolution to spot divergence. Because divergence usually means opportunity or danger.

There’s a line in Madonna’s 1984 megahit Material Girl that shows that our brains still seek this kind of novelty.

She sings: ‘Only boys that save their pennies/make my rainy day’.

The line is memorable because Madonna takes two familiar phrases – ‘save your pennies for a rainy day’ and ‘that made my day’ – and subtly makes them new. It’s at once familiar and novel.

And that is what our brains are always on the lookout for. Novelty can be dangerous. But comforting familiarity is safe.

And when novelty is in a safe, familiar context our brain perceives opportunity.

‘Let’s give the berries a try,’ thinks primitive-you. Success. The berries are tasty and you’ve found a nutritious new food source for your group.

We all have this attraction to the divergent within the familiar. We know we have, because we’re all descended from primitive people who discovered opportunities and survived.

And music does this all the time: we listen to the same songs over and over, always delighted by the subtle variation when, for example, we move to the bridge rather than the chorus.

Music affects us deeply because it accesses this distant aspect of our brains that was once vital for survival. We feel music in the amygdala, our emotion centre, and one of the most primitive brain regions.

We feel it in the basal ganglia, where we perceive pleasure. Indeed, it can be shown in EEG recordings that listening to music floods our brain with neurotransmitters, such as dopamine.

This is why listening to music feels good. It reduces cortisol too – an analogue of the moment, all those thousands of years ago – when discovering opportunity (berries!) – reduced our stress.

The most obvious place where we feel music is in our auditory system. We hear it. But our auditory system is very closely linked to our motor system. That’s why we dance.

The link is so deep, some rehabilitation therapies for people who have lost movement due to injury or illness involve music. It seems that what we hear can help rebuild lost connections to let us move again.

The most recently evolved area of the brain is the neocortex. It’s this area that is much more developed than in other animal species.

When the neocortex processes music, it’s on a more conscious level. We notice patterns, make associations with similar music or memories.

It’s probably the case that the ability of music to trigger memory operates in a deeper, older area of the brain than the neocortex. But the neocortex is where we consciously consider the associations.

Other species make music. And if you listen carefully, the music they make tells us something about them.

Birds are skittish, always in motion. And they’re light enough to fly. Their songs tend towards the treble, the high notes. Lots of fast sharp tones.

Whale song by contrast is slow bass baritone. Deeper in every sense of the word.

What about humans? Some trace the origin of our music to the moment, 4.4 million years ago, when an australopithecine ancestor first stood on two feet.

The first footsteps then provided the baseline for everything that was to come. From primitive beats to Beethoven, to Madonna’s Material Girl and beyond.

This might be why music has such a powerful ability to connect us, beyond culture, language or politics.

After World War 2, it wasn’t a statesman who laid the groundwork for the USA and Japan to reconnect. It was a musician. The great jazz composer, John Coltrane. More about that here.

Curiously, while music has a universal power, it also seems that our personal tastes can say a lot about us. Even the type of romantic partner we’re likely to be.

Ultimately, listening to music is an active, creative process. One that can change our brain function in the moment. If you need a time out, unwind with some relaxing strings.

Or get the blood pumping with a solid baseline. Reignite happy memories with a tune from your teenage years.

Or reminisce with a piece that was a favourite of someone who’s no longer with you.

Michael Spitzer, professor of music at the University of Liverpool, calls music an ‘umbilical cord back to mother nature’. And it’s never been more accessible than it is today.

With that in mind, we made a collaborative playlist. Feel free to listen and add your own favourite songs.

The power of music is real, and measurable. Enjoy.