Why music can affect people s emotions!

Text: Sijia Zhao has been authorized**

About author:Ph.D. in neuroscience from University College London, undergraduate in neuroscience, master's degree in computer science, and Ph.D. candidate at UCL.

Let's start with a direct answer: we don't know how the human brain works now, and we're not sure why. To be precise, we're not even sure why we have this thing.

and emotions is a branch of psychology that specializes in the study of the relationship between human emotions and emotions.

There is a journal dedicated to this area, not thanks: psychology of music

I've always felt that the relationship between art and science is very strange, and that art can convey to the audience feelings and emotions that science can't convey – although they are considered material in neuroscience, but today, artists are able to convey strong and complex emotions through color, shadow and harmony, and even when time passes, life passes, circumstances and thoughts change, this emotion can still be transmitted to the audience through artwork.

In other words, it's not the material itself, but some kind of precise combination, whether it's different colors, different lines and shades, or chords, and by showing this combination, you can instantly unlock a certain emotion in the viewer's brain. This emotion can vary from person to person, but most of the emotions felt are similar and often not very simple.

This is what is often referred to as resonance.

Emotion is a psychological state that synthesizes people's feelings, thoughts and behaviors, which includes people's psychological responses to external or self-stimulus, as well as the physiological reactions derived from such psychological reactions. The analysis and identification of emotions is an important research topic at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, computer science and artificial intelligence.

Steven Pinker, a well-known cognitive psychologist and linguist, likens it to auditory cheesecake; We Chinese think it's not bad to be an auditory bun. It is something that humans learn to make and convey emotions, just as steamed buns do to the taste buds of the tongue.

In 2009 (Fritz et al 2009), a German experiment involving indigenous Africans (i.e., people who have never been exposed to the West) to listen to Western classics found that there are three basic emotions in the West: happiness, sadness, and fear. Even if the cultural background and ** background are different, these three basic emotions can still be identified.

I've been very interested in this area lately, and since my major is neuroscience, it's still a bit difficult to talk about emotions from my point of view, so I should first figure out a more basic question: why do some melodies sound good and some don't? Friends who know a little bit will say harmony harmony, so why does harmony make you feel good? Why? Why?

I'll use my shallow ** knowledge to talk about it, don't pay attention to the details, so that people like us who have not learned ** at all can roughly understand.

Let's take the West as an example, which is composed of 7 tones (called scales to be precise), which we learned in elementary school.

Dolemi sent instigated lasi

do re mi fa so la ti

c d e f g a b

Added: Classical Chinese ** is composed of five tones Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu; And the Japanese classical ** is based on the Chinese Gong Shang Jiao Zhengyu added a scale to 6 notes).

chord refers to pressing two notes (or a combination of more) at the same time. Some combinations of sounds are good, i.e. consonant; Some combinations are not good, i.e. dissonant. Knowing which combinations are consonant (i.e., good) and which are not, is the basis of composition.

For the convenience of the following explanation, let's look at a piano keyboard.

** They have found that when one of the two notes is exactly the fifth tone after the other, or when there is a difference of 4 notes in the middle, it is the best sound, which is perfect 5th (perfect fifth), with perfect consonance. What is the fifth tone? Let's choose a random tone first, do, then the fifth note after it is so, and the two keys are pressed at the same time, this combination is perfect 5th, which sounds the best. (In the case of a piano, for example, the white keys are one note and the black keys are half notes.) ）

Perfect 4th is also very good, so I won't go into too much detail here. The classical Western theory summarizes this into a table, as detailed below (the further down, the more difficult it is).

Edit search (self-made table It is worth noting that the perception of the melody "good or not" will directly affect the pleasure of listening, and the pleasure here is not equal to emotional happiness. A completely unpleasant melody is not considered at this stage and the main research scope of emotions and emotions, a completely unpleasant melody you won't want to listen to, let alone treat it as a **, of course, this has a strong cultural impact.

Cognitive scientist Mark Changzi believes that emotions are caused by us associating sound with action. Because we are able to arouse our own emotions by observing the expressions, voices, and movements of other human beings. In other words, ** is a medium that transmits real human actions.

Personally, I agree with this theory, because I am reminded of two things:

1.Rhythm. People are very fond of tapping, such as tapping the table with their fingers rhythmically when they are bored; When I need to give my full attention to tracking a recurring sound, whether it's a ** or a monotonous sound, in a noisy environment, tapping the beat myself, will help me focus. This phenomenon is perceived by our home Snesorimotor Synchronization (SMS) and action synchronization. The auditory system's ability to perceive the tempo and synchronize the movements is the most representative, and its most interesting product is dance. In fact, do you know that birds can also dance (the discovery of Cambridge)? Birds of the same species will have different accents (found in the lab next door).

2.In the piano performance competition, do you think the judges are based on sound or vision?

You must think, it's not nonsense, the piano game must be sound. Although the judges probably intended to do so, unfortunately, research has found it clear that in performance competitions, what is seen is more dominant than what is heard. What do you see in piano competitions? What you see is the movements and expressions of the performers. In other words, what you think is the level of performance is largely influenced by the player's movements. The more enthusiastic the player's playing movements, the stronger your emotional perception of **. Speaking of which, you should think of Lang Lang.

It's not black. But. His visual performance probably adds a lot of points to his overall level of playing.

This is an experiment done by Dr Chia-Jung Tsay from UCL in 2013 and published in PNAS, and the results are so remarkable that you can do it yourself on the school's official YouTube page. (Link here, no thanks: Classical Music Competitions judged by sight, not sound).

In other words, Dr. Cai is completely the number one goddess in my mind, a Harvard-educated psychologist and professional pianist, and now an associate professor in the Department of Management Science and Innovation at UCL.

Moreover, she is also very elegant, and she will take a screenshot of the youtube** thumbnail picture to show you, which is not too good-looking. But, anyway, I was already on my knees when I saw it. After reading her previous articles and experiences, I have never admired a woman in this world so much except my mother, it is simply my ideal type.

There's a lot to be said on this topic, and it's just a matter of writing where you want to go. I can go all the way to the random monosyllabic sound pattern I am doing now, and I can also talk about children's cognition of sounds, language, and even the prediction of rules. If you're interested, check out statistical learning and predictive coding, it's very interesting. That's all for today.

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