Why Do Some Songs Give You The Chills?

Think about the first time you ever heard Asia's Heat of the Moment, one of my favorite songs of all time. The synths, the poignant lyrics and the novel harmonies combined might have sent shivers running up your spine, all the way to the base of your very cool mullet. Okay, I'm half kidding and I've given you a terrible example. But you might have had the same sensation from some other song, and a group of scientists are from Harvard, Wesleyan and the University of Southern California are scanning brains to figure out why. They hope their research will help scientists understand the evolutionary origin of musical aesthetics.

"Perhaps one of the reasons why music is a cross-culturally indispensable artifact is that it appeals directly through an auditory channel to emotional and social processing centers of the human brain," lead author Matthew Sachs from the University of Southern California writes in the study. The sound and emotional parts of the brain might be linked, which is why we like listening to music so much.The group started by screening questionnaires from over 200 students in the Boston area, ultimately settling on 10 in each of two groups: a "chill" group—people who felt chills when listening to their favorite songs, and a "no chill" group—people who didn't. (Normally, I'd picture a "no chill" group as gang of college frat boys blasting Drake in a basement. That wasn't the case here.)

After scanning each group's brains with a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, the scientists noticed some differences. The Guardian reports:

The brains of people who felt the chills had more nerve fibres running from the auditory cortex, needed for basic hearing ability, to two other regions, namely the anterior insular cortex, involved in processing feelings, and the medial prefrontal cortex, which is thought to monitor emotions and assign values to them.

Basically, the chill group's brain wiring better connected the sound part of the brain to the feelings part and the "how-I-should-feel-about-those-feelings" part. The Guardian also reports that the study is in its early stages, and as your inner skeptic should note, results from a study observing only 20 people probably isn't worth betting your house on.

The scientists point this out in their paper, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. But they also note that their results agree with prior studies, and hope their research will inform future research on how we evolved to like music so much as a species.

http://www.popsci.com/why-do-some-songs-give-you-chills?dom=rss-default&src=syn

It's usually the lyric of a song that gives me the chills.
I can really be won over by a song. If a guy was to sing a song to me, spoke to me in lyrics, I'd be putty in his hot sweaty hands.....

Hmmmm. What was the thread about again? Oh yeah. Chills. Sometimes it's just a vibe of a song that does it, an opening guitar riff or a bass line.

It can be many things, how a song is song and what passion and emotion is placed into the song. You can have the same song song by different artists and yet one will only give you the chills. So I think the greatest emphasis can be by the artist themselves.
Though again there is certainly some classic music, with is not with any vocals that gives me the chill, so it would be very interesting to study the many aspects of what tunes do give us the chills.

It's a very individual thing.

A lot can be spoken through a song.

Hallelujah does that to me, just listen to the words, it's really dark.



Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Yes sassy that's a chilling song but as Didge said, it is about who sings it.
I've heard that song murderend and over-sung and hated it.

Oh me too, and I don't think you can beat Leonard Cohen.

Did he sing a song called "so long marianne"?

He certainly did

Another one by him  Who by fire



And who by fire, who by water,
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
Who in your merry merry month of may,
Who by very slow decay,
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
And who by avalanche, who by powder,
Who for his greed, who for his hunger,
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
Who in solitude, who in this mirror,
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
Who in mortal chains, who in power,
And who shall I say is calling?

eddie wrote:It's a very individual thing.

A lot can be spoken through a song.

It can be anything, melody or lyrics. It's the experience...what you were thinking and what you were doing...and the replay of that experience that memory gives.

It's the feel of a song and yes, the memory it evokes.

There's a certain intimacy with a song I think.

https://youtu.be/A6CdxwqNY7cSends chills every time I  hear it.

Never bettered.

That's a classic HA. Doesn't give me the chills but it's a great song nonetheless.