New research has identified a specific pattern of electrical brain activity associated with experiencing a musical chill. The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
“Step by step we would like to advance the understanding of musical pleasure. One path of research is to take a look on how musical emotions are shared between people,” explained study author Thibault Chabin of the University of Burgundy-Franche Comté.
To study musical pleasure, the researchers utilized electroencephalography (EEG), a non-invasive technique that scans for electrical currents using sensors placed across the surface of the scalp.
“To study the pleasure associated with music and the musical chills with EEG was useful because EEG is a direct method of cerebral investigations that can be easily exported outside of the lab. It can be used in hyperscanning paradigms on several participants simultaneously. This research in laboratory conditions was a fist step before other experimentations in natural settings during concerts. We needed to know how musical pleasure can be captured with EEG, so we led this research to highlight the cortical activities that underlie the musical pleasure.”
For their study, the researchers recruited 18 healthy volunteers who frequently experienced chills induced by pleasurable music. The researchers recorded the participants’ brain activity as they listened to five chill-inducing musical extracts that they had provided, along with three additional neutral extracts selected by the experimenters.
The participants also continuously reported their emotional state by pushing on a four-button response box that included four levels: neutral, low pleasure, high pleasure, and chills. In total, 305 chills were reported, each lasting, on average, 8.75 seconds.
When experiencing musical chills, low frequency electrical signals called “theta activity” — a type of activity associated with successful memory performance in the context of high rewards and musical appreciation — either increase or decrease in the brain regions that are involved in musical processing.
The researchers observed this specific pattern of electrical activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (a region involved in emotional processing), the supplementary motor area (a mid-brain region involved in movement control) and the right temporal lobe (a region on the right side of the brain involved in auditory processing and musical appreciation) when participants experienced a chill.
“The orbitofrontal cortex is a part of the reward system and has a specific connectivity with the auditory cortex in the processing of musical reward. So, it was very interesting to highlight patterns of activity in both these areas,” Chabin told PsyPost.
These regions work together to process music, trigger the brain’s reward systems, and release dopamine — a “feel-good” hormone and neurotransmitter. Combined with the pleasurable anticipation of your favorite part of the song, this produces the tingly chill you experience — a physiological response thought to indicate greater cortical connectivity.
Chabin hopes to use the new findings to study musical pleasure in other contexts. “We would like to insist on the importance of reinforcing laboratory findings with more natural experiences. The research is built brick by brick and as explained before, this paper shows that EEG can efficiently provide objective data about musical pleasure. We are now turned toward the next step: to capture how these mechanisms arise in natural musical situations in groups,” he explained.
