Striking a chord: How music primes our minds for connection
New Haven, Conn. — When neuroscientist and musician AZA Allsop discovered research by his Yale colleague Joy Hirsch about how group drumming and musical interaction can affect social behavior, he knew there was a collaboration in their future.
Five years later, their joint work has shown that music is a powerful social enhancer that directly impacts brain functioning.
“When I reached out to see if we could work together on a project focused on music, Joy was as excited as I was,” said Allsop, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who is also a jazz artist. “As we drafted our new research, I really relied on my background in music production, theory, and performance to help shape things.”
Hirsch, also a neuroscientist, brought her own musical experience to the partnership. A veteran competitive ballroom dancer, she has won many accolades including national championship titles.
“AZA and I connected immediately, because of our shared love of music, our experience with music in one form or another, and our commitment to understanding how the brain operates under music conditions,” said Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and of neuroscience.
In a new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, they find that listening to harmonically consonant chord progressions during face-to-face interaction strengthened neural activity in brain areas that help people understand and respond to others.
The findings suggest that music may help promote social bonding on a biological level, they say, explaining why it often plays an important role in social rituals and group experiences.
The results could also have implications for therapies that use music to support people experiencing issues of social disconnectedness, such as neuropsychiatric conditions like autism or psychological conditions like social anxiety.
“We’re hoping that our contribution will provide an evidence-based mechanism that shows how music actually enhances the neural systems that promote sociality,” said Hirsch, the study’s senior author.
For the study, the researchers were quite deliberate in selecting the chord progression they’d examine.
“Part of our hypothesis was that certain chord progressions have a higher prevalence in the music of our culture because they’re doing something to our physiology,” said Allsop, the study’s first author. “So, we used a progression that’s found very commonly in jazz music, pop music, a lot of Western musical language.”
In a series of experiments, they measured brain activity in pairs of people during face-to-face interactions. Specifically, they used an imaging technique known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which tracks task-induced changes in blood flow in the brain.
“Unlike MRI, this technique lets us capture brain images of people who are engaged in social activities,” Hirsch said.
The participants, who sat across a table from each other, were asked to interact with their partner by staring directly, eye to eye, into their faces. In some trials, they listened to what are known as consonant chord progressions, a sequence of pleasant, predictable musical chords that promote feelings of relaxation. In other trials, there was either no music or music without the predictable chord progressions, i.e. the notes were “scrambled.”
When the harmonious chord progressions were played, researchers noted increased activity in regions of the brain associated with social perception, emotional processing, and interpersonal connection. Participants also reported feeling a more heightened sense of social connectedness.
Researchers say this suggests that music may help coordinate and strengthen human social relationships.
“One of the paper’s most important and unexpected findings was showing that one’s perception of connectedness to another person is directly related to the activity in these specific regions of the brain,” Hirsch said.
For Allsop, a keyboardist and vocalist, the connections between music and neuroscience feel natural. “I’ve always been interested in how the different structures and languages within music can move people from an aesthetic standpoint,” he said. “At Yale, I’ve started asking that question from the biological perspective, too.”
Dash Watts, a research assistant in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, was the study’s co-first author. Other Yale authors include Adam Noah and Xian Zhang, associate research scientists in psychiatry, and Simone Compton, a former post graduate associate in psychiatry.
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Five years later, their joint work has shown that music is a powerful social enhancer that directly impacts brain functioning.
“When I reached out to see if we could work together on a project focused on music, Joy was as excited as I was,” said Allsop, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who is also a jazz artist. “As we drafted our new research, I really relied on my background in music production, theory, and performance to help shape things.”
Hirsch, also a neuroscientist, brought her own musical experience to the partnership. A veteran competitive ballroom dancer, she has won many accolades including national championship titles.
“AZA and I connected immediately, because of our shared love of music, our experience with music in one form or another, and our commitment to understanding how the brain operates under music conditions,” said Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and of neuroscience.
In a new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, they find that listening to harmonically consonant chord progressions during face-to-face interaction strengthened neural activity in brain areas that help people understand and respond to others.
The findings suggest that music may help promote social bonding on a biological level, they say, explaining why it often plays an important role in social rituals and group experiences.
The results could also have implications for therapies that use music to support people experiencing issues of social disconnectedness, such as neuropsychiatric conditions like autism or psychological conditions like social anxiety.
“We’re hoping that our contribution will provide an evidence-based mechanism that shows how music actually enhances the neural systems that promote sociality,” said Hirsch, the study’s senior author.
For the study, the researchers were quite deliberate in selecting the chord progression they’d examine.
“Part of our hypothesis was that certain chord progressions have a higher prevalence in the music of our culture because they’re doing something to our physiology,” said Allsop, the study’s first author. “So, we used a progression that’s found very commonly in jazz music, pop music, a lot of Western musical language.”
In a series of experiments, they measured brain activity in pairs of people during face-to-face interactions. Specifically, they used an imaging technique known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which tracks task-induced changes in blood flow in the brain.
“Unlike MRI, this technique lets us capture brain images of people who are engaged in social activities,” Hirsch said.
The participants, who sat across a table from each other, were asked to interact with their partner by staring directly, eye to eye, into their faces. In some trials, they listened to what are known as consonant chord progressions, a sequence of pleasant, predictable musical chords that promote feelings of relaxation. In other trials, there was either no music or music without the predictable chord progressions, i.e. the notes were “scrambled.”
When the harmonious chord progressions were played, researchers noted increased activity in regions of the brain associated with social perception, emotional processing, and interpersonal connection. Participants also reported feeling a more heightened sense of social connectedness.
Researchers say this suggests that music may help coordinate and strengthen human social relationships.
“One of the paper’s most important and unexpected findings was showing that one’s perception of connectedness to another person is directly related to the activity in these specific regions of the brain,” Hirsch said.
For Allsop, a keyboardist and vocalist, the connections between music and neuroscience feel natural. “I’ve always been interested in how the different structures and languages within music can move people from an aesthetic standpoint,” he said. “At Yale, I’ve started asking that question from the biological perspective, too.”
Dash Watts, a research assistant in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, was the study’s co-first author. Other Yale authors include Adam Noah and Xian Zhang, associate research scientists in psychiatry, and Simone Compton, a former post graduate associate in psychiatry.
END