Why does music give you goosebumps?

Have you ever heard a song somewhere that connected you to a special moment in your life? Or maybe it's not about specific topics, but you're one of those who get goosebumps with some types of music.

If you are one of the latter, you would have been a good candidate to participate in the study proposed by a Harvard student who wanted to discover what happens in our brains when we feel chills while listening to some piece of music. But what exactly did he discover? We tell you.

Does music give you goosebumps?

When Matthew Sachs, a former student at Harvard University, decided to study the curiosity that this observation aroused in him, he launched an investigation through which he sought to obtain conclusions about the origin of the reaction of certain people when music gives them goosebumps.

To do this, he examined 20 students, of which 10 of themadmitted noticing chills when exposed to musicand another 10 said they did not perceive anything different at that time. He performed brain scans on each and every one of them to be able to identify which areas were especially activated in that situation, with the aim of being able to understand what was different between one person and another.

The results obtained

The conclusions reached were categorical, since Sachs observed a series of structural differences between the two brains that would explain the difference in reaction between those who get goosebumps from music and those who they feel nothing.

Through this study it was possible to conclude that those people who had established a type of emotional attachment to music, tended to have greater density of connecting fibers between your auditory cortex and the brain areas responsible for processing emotions. In this way, these two parties can communicate better.

But what would this discovery mean? That what at first may be evidencing the simple detail that music gives you goosebumps is a sample of your greater sensitivity to perceiving emotions, living them with much more intensity and strength than other types of people. In other words, you are not only sensitive to what the music transmits to you, but your own nature is prone to feel everything much more intensely than average.

Useful conclusions moving forward

Although the study was certainly somewhat limited, having a sample in which only 20 people were studied, the intention is to be able to expand said research.

In this way, it would be possible to delve deeper into the possible benefits offered by the new conclusions reached, since it would mean improvements in certain types of psychological therapies such as music therapy a.

Using music to influence our emotions

Another consideration that should be taken into account when studying this phenomenon further is the innate ability that people have to establish associations between our most intimate emotions and the events that take place around us.

For example, when something happens that moves us in one way or another, such as receiving sad news while we are watching a movie, surely when we see it again in the future we will unconsciously associate the sadness of That moment.

In the same way, when we listen to a song and we are feeling something very intensebeing with a person we like, or we share a passionate moment while it sounds, it is almost certain that when we hear that same melody at another moment, it will remind us of the sensations we experienced with that special someone.

This fact, although it is something that happens naturally, could also be used to pursue an end, such as resorting to this type of mechanism (by which it is possible to influence the emotions of a person through exposure to a song) in certain treatments to improve the quality of life of certain people who are going through emotionally delicate moments.