Reggaeton arrived in Spain as a steamroller at the end of the 90s of the last century. Its catchy danceable rhythms and the enormous capacity to hook the viewer, have placed this musical genre in one of the most listened to by young people of different generations over the last 20 years.
Although it has been the subject of much criticism, especially for the macho content of many of its lyrics, reggaeton has been the subject of study for the doctoral thesis of neurosurgeon Jesús MartÃn-Fernández, who lives at the University of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
In his thesis, MartÃn-Fernández has studied music and the different brain reactions that it has in our body.
Reggaeton under study
To carry out this curious study, the neurosurgeon had the help of 28 people, without musical training and with really varied musical tastes to make up the most open sample possible.
They were first subjected to hearing tests to determine the level of musical ability and distinction of melodies, rhythms and other phases of music in each of the volunteers.
Once this first phase was carried out, the 28 users of the study underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging while listening to different musical styles that generated a series of different reactions in their brain.
The researchers then analyzed each of the samples that the 28 users gave, in addition to analyzing the Bold signal , which shows areas of the brain that take up oxygen, which occurs when different areas of our brain are activated.
Revealing results
Once researchers from MartÃn-Fernández’s team faced the results, they found some really revealing things. After listening to rock, folk, classical, reggaeton and electronic music, “it’s as if reggaeton, with this peculiar and repetitive rhythm, prepares us for movement, to dance just by listening to it,” explained MartÃn-Fernández.
According to the study, reggaeton music prepares us from its first chords to go out dancing on the floor, something that does not happen with the rest of the known music.
“What most caught our attention was that it activated a primitive region of the brain: the basal ganglia,” explained the person in charge of the thesis, ” are groups of neurons that are in deep areas of the brain and are responsible for modulating posture, start and finish a movement … in addition to being involved in the reward or pleasure system.
The study itself revealed that brain activity when we listened to classical music was less than that activated when we listened to reggaeton.
