Study finds music can cause an effect on the body similar to drugs or sex

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A study profiled by the BBC has found that certain moments in music can cause physical reactions on the human body normally reserved for sex or drugs. From BBC:

You may know these physical feelings as chills or tingles – but some people feel them so powerfully, they describe the sensations as “skin orgasms”. “The aesthetic experience can be so intense that you can’t do anything else,” says Loui.

We normally only respond like this to experiences that might ensure or endanger our survival – food, reproduction, or the terrifying plummet of a rollercoaster. How can music – hardly a life-or-death pursuit – move the mind and the body as powerfully as sex?

So what particularly causes this in music?

researchers have then been able to pinpoint the kinds of features that are more likely to trigger the different sensations during a musical frisson. Sudden changes in harmony, dynamic leaps (from soft to loud), and melodic appoggiaturas (dissonant notes that clash with the main melody, like you’ll find in Adele’s Someone Like You)

Check out more about the study at BBC. Here’s the Adele song they mentioned. What song gives you the chills?

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