It is not the first time that a team of researchers has found a relationship between the brain waves of people that interact in some way with each other. For years, the linguist and neuroscientist Suzanne Dikker, from the universities of Utrecht and New York, has been showing in different essays that what we call feeling , that is, the chemistry that sometimes arises between individuals, is reflected in their brain activity, that presents a striking tune. Apparently, it is higher among couples than among strangers and, as Dikker reveals, it can manifest itself even without them saying a word. Similarly, David Poeppel, from New York University and the Max Planck Institute, showed in a study published in 2017 that the brains of students who attend a class are also synchronized , and that this phenomenon is more noticeable the higher it is your concentration.
At the time, Poeppel and his collaborators suggested that such a finding could be used, for example, to define what would be the best conditions for the audience to better appreciate a show. Well, now, a group of scientists from the University of Arkansas and the Grove School of Engineering, City College of New York, have delved into this aspect and wanted to determine to what extent the brain waves of the hearing that are synchronized attend a concert. In a statement from the latter institution, it is indicated that when listeners are captivated by music and connect with it, their neural response is, as in the case of the aforementioned students, identical. Thus they were able to determine it after measuring the brain activity of some volunteers using an electroencephalography equipment.
Captivating replays
In a work published in the journal Scientific Reports , these experts emphasize that music tends to be repetitive in its structure, in the same way that the reactions it elicits in the audience are also often repeated. The aforementioned connection diminishes precisely when we find that reiteration in the pieces that are more familiar to us, but if it is about other unknown ones, the attention is maintained, as does the cerebral correlation between subjects, something that is more noticeable in those who have some musical formation. The latter has attracted the attention of the signatories of this study, since, in the other fields, interest invariably declines with repetition. Music, in this case, would be an exception.
Jens Madsen, an expert in biomedical engineering at City College, co-author of this initiative, maintains that although it will be necessary to investigate more in this regard, “the measurement of brain waves provides clues about the sensations that music awakens in us and what the makes it so special ”.
Reference: Music synchronizes brainwaves across listeners with strong effects of repetition, familiarity and training. Jens Madsen et al. Scientific Reports (2019). DOI: doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40254-w
