doldrums, researchers have found. The reasons for this are complex, and somewhat disputed, but it appears many of us actually enjoy sad music. Some researchers have suggested that because this type of music often uses slow, beautiful melodies, it is aesthetically pleasing and the lyrics help to trigger feelings of empathy. This might also trigger the release of a ‘consoling’ hormone known as prolactin, which is thought to help counteract the mental pain of grief and sadness. As the music simulates sadness often in a safe setting, it might be tricking the brain into producing this hormone and helping to reduce any pain the listener is experiencing. But not everyone is as susceptible. The strength of certain personality traits, such as absorption – the tendency to become deeply immersed in sensory and imaginary experiences – and openness help to determine how much someone will benefit most from listening to sad music. Equally, the context we are listening to music plays a role too. People who are in happy relationships tend to prefer listening to love songs, while those who are dissatisfied with their love-life will tend to find laments about lost love and break-ups more appealing. There are effects that music appears to have that do appear to be more universal than others, however. Melodies in the major key, for example, are seen as happier than those in minor keys across cultures around the world. But why music has such a strong impact on our emotions is still something of a mystery that has yet to be fully unravelled. Modern brain-scanning technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are providing some clues. Processing power Music, like all sound, is picked up by our eardrums and passed along to the cochlea in our inner ear as vibrations, where they turn into electrical signals that cascade along nerves to the brainstem. But once here, music is processed by a surprisingly large number of areas – not just the auditory cortices, but also those involved in vision, movement, timing, memory, reward and those deep in our brains involved with emotion. Unique patterns of neural activity light up when volunteers listen to clips of musical instruments selected to induce particular emotional responses. Most activity is found in the auditory cortices, but it also shows up in neighbouring areas involved in recognising emotions (such when we look at someone’s facial expression Mind over matter Dynaudio’s chief acoustic engineer says our brains can be tricked into believing stereo sound is happening in 3D space 56 Magazine 04
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