Musical Frisson

Have you ever listened to a song that gave you so much emotion that you started to get chills and all of sudden you felt like you could do anything? Yeah I have too, actually a lot of times now that I think of it. It’s a frequent occurrence for me. I’ll listen to a song or watch someone perform on stage and all of sudden it’s like something connects and each hair on my body is standing. Sometimes it will be quicker than others, it won’t last as long. But then sometimes I get so overwhelmed that the chills will last for 30 seconds or even up for a minute. There’s a name for this and it’s called Musical Frisson. There’s a reason for my madness, and why I picked this certain subject for my blog. Music is a big part of my life. When I get chills while listening to a song or watching someone perform, I know in my heart that it’s something that I want to be doing. I want be performing, I want be up there giving my all. The energy you get performing in front of a crowd is incredible. It’s like all of sudden it’s just you up there and that’s all that matters in the world. That’s how I feel while listening to certain types of songs. For everyone a certain type of song can induce these chills or musical frisson. It might be that a certain type of song can spark an old memory, or that just watching someone perform with so much emotion is enough to generate these chills. According Science Daily, the neurological spectrum of this is pretty easy to understand. The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill said that when you get chills from the pleasure of listening to music, dopamine releases in the blood stream. I know that I said in my last post that most studies are not able to help the music and emotion theories but a study done by Neural Institute and Hospital at McGill actually seemed to benefit the from this study and it helped the world a bit more when it comes to this theory. The Neural Institute measured the amount of dopamine that was being released in response to certain types of songs. The song that they chose have been reported of eliciting chills, changes in heart rate, skin conductance, breathing, and temperature. When they actually did the study they put the patient through a “combination of PET and fMRI brain imaging techniques”. Neural Institute said that the imaging techniques “revealed that dopamine release is greater for pleasurable versus neutral music, and that levels of release are correlated with the extent of emotional arousal and pleasurability ratings” (Musical Chills: Why They Give Us Thrills). Dr. Robert Zatorre who is a neurologist at the Neural Institute has said that from theses findings that we can see that "music is unique in the sense that we can measure all reward phases in real-time, as it progresses from baseline neutral to anticipation to peak pleasure all during scanning." From just this little bit of information we can see that even though music and emotion studies are hard to obtain and collect it can be done. Were getting farther in technology and the ability to examine dopamine and record levels of it is incredible (Musical Chills: Why They Give Us Thrills).  Just because it might take a certain song for person to get chills doesn’t mean that we can’t study the person that is experiencing them. From this study we found out just what makes the body respond the way it does when listening to music. Dopamine is neurotransmitter in our body that is said to help control the “brains reward center and pleasure center”. In times when you experience a dopamine release you might have the sudden urge to take action and move toward the reward you are seeking (Psychology Today). So the next time you get chills from watching T.V., listening to music, or doing something that makes you happy, think about the neurotransmitter called dopamine that cause you to have emotional responses. Take a listen to the song I posted at the top of this. It’s called “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls. It’s one of the many songs I have listened to that elicits dopamine neurotransmitters in my brain. I hope it has the same effect on you. Enjoy!