Music has been the bedrock of social situations across centuries and civilizations. From worship music to tunes playing at parties – songs can help us converse and connect.
A new study out of Yale is exploring that connection, by taking a closer look at music’s role as a social enhancer and its impacts on the brain.
“This is a whole new field of neuroscience and it's enabled by new imaging technologies that allow us to put detectors on people's heads as they are interacting with each other,” said Joy Hirsch, the study’s co-author, and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
Hirsch, who is also a veteran competitive ballroom dancer, teamed up on the study with AZA Allsop, an artist and Yale neuroscientist. The pair wanted to investigate how music might strengthen social relationships.
Using special imaging, they monitored how a part of the brain that helps people understand and respond to others – the right angular gyrus – reacted to different music during face-to-face conversations.
They found that while two people converse face-to-face, neural activity in this brain area was stronger when harmonious, predictable chord progressions were played.
It’s a connection that could indicate a certain kind of music enables social bonding on a biological level, the researchers said.
Conversely, when the music was scrambled and the notes were not in a harmonious, predictable progression, those brain connections did not happen, researchers said.
The implications could extend beyond party tunes to any number of situations, including diplomacy, Hirsch said.
“The prediction is that it could. These data say it could,” she said. “That doesn't mean that if we put our two heads of state together around the table and play these chord progressions, that they'll start getting along with each other. But it does suggest that affiliations between individuals can be modulated by specific brain areas that are sensitive to both music and live interpersonal interaction.”
Popular music with chord progressions
What is it about chord progressions that makes this brain connection possible?
Joan Burr, a pianist and composer in Glastonbury, explained that the harmonic structure of a composition has the innate capacity to reach the heart of a listener – whether or not they are trained in music.
Bach’s “Air on the G String” and Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” are classic examples of harmonious chord progressions, she said. So is Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations.
“In more contemporary music, consider the repeated chord progressions in such pieces as “Let it Be” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that makes the music of the Beatles so timeless,” she said.
She also said jazz is the genre that explores so many of the emotional nuances that music can be capable of with its use of 7th, 9th, 11th chords and beyond.
“Where the effects of harmonies in music will go in the future is only up to the creativity and inventiveness of composers to come,” Burr said.
