Let Us Have A Go 'At Musical Thinking' !

Do you ever ask yourself why your like music ?  Do you  wonder what exactly is in music that  moves you ?  Also why does listening to music has such an emotional impact on you ?  What about your tastes in music, where do they come from ?  Marvin Minsky attempts to answer some of these questions in in his article "Music, Mind, and Meaning"

"Why do we like music? Our culture immerses us in it for hours each day, and everyone knows how it touches our emotions, but few think of how music touches other kinds of thought. It is astonishing how little curiosity we have about so pervasive an "environmental" influence. What might we discover if we were to study musical thinking?"  More

Music And The Chill Factor

A recent study by scientists at the ‘The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University’ have found that listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is more closely related to the pleasures that go with rewards like food, drugs and sex.  If a volunteer enjoyed a particular piece of music this produced a chill like response in them which in turn increased the volunteer's dopamine level.  It also resulted in an increase in the volunteer's heart rate, breathing and sweating.

".....this is the first demonstration that an abstract reward such as music can lead to dopamine release. Abstract rewards are largely cognitive in nature, and this study paves the way for future work to examine non-tangible rewards that humans consider rewarding for complex reasons.”   MORE