A neuroscientific study proves music strengthens how humans bond
Since so many human rituals revolve around music, a team of neuroscientists decided to test the impact of music on neural systems promoting sociality.
The jazz musician and a ballroom dancer duo published their findings from Yale University last month, shedding light on the nuts and bolts behind a whole chapter of human existence.
After Aza Allsop discovered research by their colleague Joy Hirsch on how group drumming and musical interaction can enhance social interaction, they teamed up with others to expand on her work. Together, they examined human responses to a few chord progressions, ones carefully selected to match those found commonly in jazz, pop, and a lot of conventional Western music. Importantly, the sounds had to coexist in consonance, or sounds that are pleasantly perceived by the brain, above more chaotic music. For this, Allsop and Hirsch’s team joined two participants in a direct eye-contact interaction and measured their resulting brain activity.
Upon hearing harmonious chord progressions, regions of the brain associated with emotional processing, social perception, and interpersonal connection became bolstered with activity. The results highlighted that the participants’ perception of connectedness was inherently tied to this kind of cerebral activity. When the music was ‘scrambled’ into dissonant patterns or stopped, so did the social enhancement.
What does the study tell us?
The analysis was groundbreaking in that it was the first to prove that the feeling of being in sync with one’s interlocutor while listening to music is actually matched by the brain patterns, as observed by the increased blood flow in brain regions associated with interpersonal processing. They were able to find concrete proof for a hypothesis long held in scientific and civil circles alike, that music mediates interaction by synchronising emotions and facilitating social relationships.
These findings reinforce previous information that has suggested that music increases spontaneous cooperative play between children, helping their behavioural development. The study is the first to test the connection between passive listeners, but earlier work had already shown that making music together can facilitate kinship.
“Group singing in adults increases perceived social closeness and bonding and lowers the pain threshold,” the study also mentions, as well as highlighting that collaborative songwriting as well as drumming can “enhance peer and social connectedness”.
Although this research explains a lot about why so many of our coming-of-age rituals, religious festivities, special occasions, group activities and general everyday social enhancements are brought by the accompaniment of a soundtrack, the research doesn’t stop at proving something many of us had already been feeling.
“As group therapy becomes a mainstay in treatment, music that drives synchrony and facilitates group connections could be utilised as an evidence-based intervention to enhance group treatment efficacy,” the study included, providing an evidence-based mechanism to the much stigmatised science of music therapy. These results could therefore impact therapies supporting those facing issues of social disconnectedness, like autism or social anxiety, as well as unify broken families or other group-based mental health treatment.
“The current loneliness epidemic highlights the critical need for solutions, and motivates rigorous investigations aimed at understanding the relationships between features of music and dyadic interactions,” the study concluded.
Finally, the work was driven by the incentive “to possibly treat symptoms of social disconnection and isolation”, helping to make the leap into getting help less scary if someone were to hear a familiar song playing in the waiting room.
