Introduction
Previously, researchers at Stanford reported that listening to classical music activates the same areas of the brain in different people, which presumably means having some universal experience. However, the Salimpour Group revealed that when a person listens to a song for the first time, the strength of particular brain connections might signal how much the person enjoys the music (Belfi & Loui, 2019). This phenomenon is based on past experiences and the music one has liked.
After several years of research, the Salimpour Group conducted a new type of brain scan during which participants listened to music that gave them goosebumps (Belfi & Loui, 2019). The researchers monitored the experiment participants’ dopamine levels during the test. Using a technology called positron emission tomography (PET), they observed that 15 minutes after listening to their favorite music, the individuals’ brains were physically “flooded” with dopamine (Belfi & Loui, 2019). The dopamine production system is evolutionarily old – animals are just as susceptible to its amount in the body as humans are (Belfi & Loui, 2019).
Music and Physiological Processes
The impact of music on a myriad of personal and social components among groups and individuals is substantial. According to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, music is linked with making social connections and improving physical fitness (Levitin, 2020). Studies have also shown that certain music can help with language learning (Levitin, 2020). This, in turn, suggests a connection between melody and memory (Jagiello et al., 2019). Music is enjoyable and is often associated with pleasurable moments: parties, socializing, friendship, and relaxation. Some studies draw a parallel between the sensations of music and drug intoxication.
Levitin (2020) also explained that listening to music changes brain chemistry primarily through physiological changes such as reduced blood pressure, anxiety, and pain. The chemical process influenced by music is also observable when using recreational drugs. Music, much like certain drugs, is primarily utilized as a relaxant. What some would call “heavy metal,” others would call light classic rock (Levitin, 2020).
However, when a person has the right music, it will always put him in a good or bad mood if he wishes. Listening to soothing music also raises serotonin and oxytocin levels in the body. It is also likely to activate neuroreceptors receptive to other hormones (Levitin, 2020). The right music can make a person happy and, for example, lead to an aroused state.
Other researchers have suggested that music can do more than affect moods. It reflects past emotions and feelings that people have experienced that are linked to their perception of a particular melody (Fancourt et al., 2019). It is music from the past or music associated with a particular event or person (Pandeya & Lee, 2020).
There is no doubt that memory plays a significant role in creating and linking memories, gathering everything about events, relationships, past and present moments, everything from the past or present, and linking it to a particular music (Fancourt et al., 2019). Artists are associated with good or bad events, sadness, or fun. Even at an early age, children respond to songs from TV commercials or music intros to children’s programs (Kirby et al., 2022). People associate things with music, each in their own way (Hides et al., 2019). In the scientific world, this issue is addressed in musical psychology.
The Human Brain’s Response to Music
The cerebral cortex receives impulses from the hypothalamus, informing it of the occurrence of emotional states (Levitin, 2020). It also receives information about the auditory signal it picks up from the occipital areas of the brain. The cerebral cortex combines this information into associations (Levitin, 2020).
The hypothalamus has another vital function – it synchronizes biorhythms (Levitin, 2020). The hypothalamus receives information about the disturbance of synchronism of body rhythms and increases the frequency of breathing and heart rhythm (Levitin, 2020). This creates the metabolic rate necessary for running (Levitin, 2020). Blood begins to flow evenly to the muscles, which ensures their normal functioning.
Music contains many periodic patterns, and the impulses the hypothalamus receives from the hearing organs are not much different from others (Levitin, 2020). Therefore, it processes them using the same methods but cannot restore the synchronism of musical rhythms (Levitin, 2020). It will only create an unpleasant state in a person. This explains many people’s unpleasant emotions under the influence of polyrhythmic and polytonal music (Levitin, 2020).
The hypothalamus functions differently during sleep and wakefulness (Levitin, 2020). It controls all phases of sleep and falling asleep. For example, a person needs certain enzymes to fall asleep, and the hypothalamus activates the glands that secrete these enzymes (Levitin, 2020). If it does not do this, the person cannot fall asleep or wake up.
Music directly connects to emotion; people cannot turn off the instinct of expectation or its connection to emotion, even if they are sure there is nothing life-threatening about a Mozart sonata (Smit et al., 2022). One implication of Meyer’s theory is that the perception and formation of emotion from music are primarily culturally dependent (Smit et al., 2022). To have any expectations, one must know the general rules and what is normal, which varies from culture to culture. Western Europeans think simple rhythms such as the waltz are “natural,” but Eastern Europeans enjoy dancing to meters that seem unusually difficult for others (Smit et al., 2022). A cheerful piece of Indonesian music may be interpreted by Westerners as “sad” simply because it sounds close to the traditionally “sad” minor scale (Smit et al., 2022).
When perceiving music, the listener’s brain performs quite a complex activity, which consists of structuring the musical and sound matter, which appears to the musical person not as some “sound mush” but as a complex multi-component and multi-level structure (Krause et al., 2020). However, the results of this activity are individual; they depend not only on the subtlety of hearing but also on a person’s musical experience. The auditory extraction of a percept occurs if there is a corresponding musical-auditory image standard in the musical memory (Krause et al., 2020). It represents a specific generalized auditory percept with which the brain compares what it has heard.
Such musical-aural standards are formed in the process of repeated acts of music perception. Many are peculiar to the music of a particular genre, style, direction, and musical culture (Krause et al., 2020). Specially organized work to develop appropriate standards speeds up and improves this process. That is why music education is so vital to a person.
Physiological and Psychological Factors
The sensory-perceptual activity of the psyche is the basis of more complex mental activity, including one beyond the sphere of music (Krause et al., 2020). It is about the brain’s ability to evoke other non-auditory sensations, so-called co-sensations or synaesthesia, and related perceptions during music perception. Synaesthesia is realized and verbalized by the subject perceiving the music (Krause et al., 2020).
There are two things to consider when determining the mechanism of non-auditory sensations. The first is connected with the fundamental non-removability of sensations from cognitive mental activity (Krause et al., 2020). The second point concerns two ways to emerge sensations – centripetal and centrifugal (Yang & Yu, 2023). The centripetal mechanism consists of sensations arising due to the influence of this or that stimulus on the corresponding sensory systems (Yang & Yu, 2023). At the same time, there is a movement along the levels of psychic hierarchy from the lowest to the highest: from sensory-perceptual processes to logical-conceptual ones (Yang & Yu, 2023). A downward movement characterizes the centrifugal mechanism (Yang & Yu, 2023).
Therefore, thinking about some object or motor act can cause changes in the corresponding receptor systems in human muscles. These changes are similar to those occurring in real sensory sensation or movement. However, these changes will occur if the individual has experienced the corresponding sensations. Therefore, the role of life and artistic experience in the emergence of these secondary sensations and related percepts must be considered (Yang & Yu, 2023). Thanks to this experience, many sensations arise in the perception of music, and music turns from an art of sounds into a phenomenon capable of revealing various worlds filled with colors, shapes, smells, and tastes to the listener.
The cognitive activity of the psyche, the human brain, in music perception, is not limited to the sensory-perceptual level. Music can generate thinking activity in the listener (Yang & Yu, 2023). At the same time, the latter can be closed on the sphere of music and can go beyond its limits. Thinking consists of information processing of primary and secondary images (gestalts) (Voskanyan et al., 2021).
An immanent feature of thinking operations is a particular translation of information from the psychological language of spatial object structures, from the language of images to the psycholinguistic, symbolic-operational language. In other words, thinking implies the operation of “signifying” gestalt with the help of symbols (Voskanyan et al., 2021). Symbols can be words of verbal language as well as any other signs.
As a system of multiple structures, the musical fabric is potentially an inexhaustible object for the listener to comprehend and signify (Voskanyan et al., 2021). The composer’s activity consists of a purposeful and often conscious selection of musical means (musical structures) for objectifying the musical-artistic image conceived and sensed in the depths of the psyche (Voskanyan et al., 2021). It is one of the aspects of the musician’s thinking. Then, the thought process of the percipient in this plan will consist of naming those musical and sound structures that his psyche has managed to select in the sound stream (Voskanyan et al., 2021).
The Influence of Classical Music on Human Emotions
Music is a mysterious phenomenon in terms of its purpose and content. In reasoning about the purpose of music, it is safe to say that individual human life is possible without this art form. Moreover, it is unlikely that throughout history, people have cultivated music and artistic activities simply because the object of these activities was pleasurable and pleasing to the ear (Taruffi & Küssner, 2019). Undoubtedly, music was and still is necessary for humans for many reasons, not all of which modern science understands. At the same time, the genesis of the art of sound was as natural as it was necessary and conditioned by certain information contained in the music.
The research focuses on whether music has a noticeable effect on observable human emotions and behavior. As such, this study aims to observe the influence of classical music on human emotional responses. Musical sound, a complex phenomenon that turns into a nervous process, generates five auditory sensations (Lapshin & Vorontsov, 2021). As a result of “filtering” the sound signal, it has spatial-temporal and modal-intensity characteristics (Lapshin & Vorontsov, 2021).
A person acquires information that makes him aware of the pitch of the sound, its duration, dynamics, timbre, and spatial localization (Lapshin & Vorontsov, 2021). These five sensations are the physiological basis of the five elementary musical devices (Lapshin & Vorontsov, 2021). However, they occur not only in the perception of individual sounds but also in the perception of more complex sound complexes. According to physiologists, the auditory system provides information about individual parameters and components of a sound signal and about combinations of these parameters and components (Lapshin & Vorontsov, 2021). This explains why people distinguish and comprehend quite a large number of such simple musical devices.
With my research, I want to explore what emotions classical music evokes in modern people. Along with the mentioned elementary sensations arising at the perception of any sounds, it is necessary to name the sensations, consciousness of which occurs exactly in musical activity. Moreover, these sensations are caused by the interaction of several sounds or by the auditory distinction of the fundamental tone and overtones (Kahn-Kilich et al., 2020). They are sensations of dissonance and consonance, support, unsteadiness, gravity, and resolution, as well as those associated with telephones (Koelsch, 2020). In general, the physiological basis of all these sensations has been described in one way or another in the scientific literature.
The research methodology I propose is a qualitative IPA-based method based on semi-structured interviews with six participants between 18 and 25. All participants are students recruited on campus. The study will occur on the same campus, and everyone will be given a booklet of questions. Survey methods in qualitative research involve collecting information using a unique, loosely structured methodology. The methods focus on identifying qualitative characteristics of the object under study; the results are not statistically distributed but presented as opinions, judgments, and evaluations (Haven & Van Grootel, 2019).
Qualitative research allows people to answer “how exactly” and “why” questions (Haven & Van Grootel, 2019). Explanations are not given in cause-and-effect relationships, as in causal studies, but at the level of describing individual examples and identifying specific cases. Such problems as data inaccuracy can arise during the study. The study will be conducted twice to avoid this, increasing the data’s accuracy.
It is planned that the study will show that the features of cognitive processes in the perception of musical works related to plot dramaturgy are that the listener recognizes in the music models of various dialogues and monologues, as well as various plot collisions, characteristic of theatrical art. Recognizing this presupposes a specific artistic and life experience and a developed linguistic ear.
Specific research indicates that the effect of music on human emotions relates to its similarities to general human speech (Haven & Van Grootel, 2019). Elements such as timbre, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, and other articulation features can be observed in speech and music. Syntagms and melodies also indicate a pattern that correlates music with the familiar communication process (Haven & Van Grootel, 2019). For instance, understanding basic speech structure can allow a listener of music to recognize and enjoy patterns within songs or other forms of music (Haven & Van Grootel, 2019). Such a factor can be influential on the emotional status of an individual.
On a more physiological level, musical sounds are incorporated into emotional experiences within the hypothalamus (Koelsch, 2020). The hypothalamus otherwise serves as the ‘pleasure center’ of the body and regulates biological rhythms (Koelsch, 2020). An improved biorhythmic synchronization often results in feelings of pleasure, comfort, or contentment (Koelsch, 2020). Therefore, recognizing musical rhythm as a form of ‘correct’ or appealing structure to the human brain can lead to emotions of enjoyment.
Current research indicates that a connection between musical rhythms and biorhythms does exist and can be informative regarding an individual’s preferences. If a person encounters an intense musical experience, it may result from resonance with a dominant biorhythm and a piece of music (Koelsch, 2020). The phenomenon is described as the “rhythm superimposition effect” (Koelsch, 2020). Often, it can be better observed among individuals with weaker nervous systems and can indicate a capacity for stronger musical experiences.
Conclusion
Individual personal characteristics of the listener significantly affect the perception of music. The intended audience of this study is students and professionals in the field. Such as mental and emotional state, the degree of novelty of the musical style for the listener, individual preferences, and musical literacy (Koelsch, 2020). The temperament of the listener can also influence the process of perception (Koelsch, 2020). However, a direct and substantial relationship was not found in the experiment.
The topic of perception and the impact of music on the person is of interest for further, more detailed research. For example, it is interesting to study the peculiarities of the choice and perception by individuals of specific musical styles and the trance effect of “club” music. The estimated budget for this study is $20. The costs include printing the questionnaire, paper, and office supplies.
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