Scientists have discovered musical patterns that can make our hearts beat faster or make our stomachs feel like they're doing somersaults.

When a chord sequence of three or more notes played at the same time goes in a different direction than we expect, it seems to cause a strong sensation around the heart, but it follows an easily predictable pattern. The thing causes strong sensations around the heart. As if it hit us directly in the gut.

“Music has a unique power to stir emotions that cannot be expressed in words,” he says. Tatsuya Daikoku at the University of Tokyo in Japan. “It's not just an auditory experience, it's a physical experience. Sometimes when music comes on, my body shivers or I feel a warmth around my heart, and that's a feeling that's hard to describe in words.”

Researchers have already shown that music can evoke strong emotional responses, but pianist and composer Daikoku and his colleagues want to know where in the body people feel those emotions. I thought. To find out, they first used analysis and statistics software to analyze his 890 songs from the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The software determined that the song's chord-to-chord sequences were various variations with high or low levels of both surprise and uncertainty. For example, in some sequences, a low surprise, low uncertainty code may be followed by a low surprise, low uncertainty code, or a low surprise, low uncertainty code may be followed by a low surprise, low uncertainty code. , there are also sequences of codes with low uncertainty but high surprise.

From this, the researchers created 92 musical segments consisting of four chord sequences. Each segment represents one of eight different combinations of surprise and uncertainty. He then asked 527 volunteers to listen to various sets of all eight chord patterns while viewing a silhouette of a human body online.

Listeners were instructed to click where they felt a physical reaction within 10 seconds of listening to the music. They then completed an online survey about the emotions they felt when they heard the chords.

The researchers found that if the first three chords followed an easily predictable pattern, the main difference in physical sensation had a lot to do with what happened on the fourth chord. If that fourth chord follows the expected pattern, people will feel it in the abdomen, but if it deviates from the expected pattern, they will feel it around the heart.

Regarding emotions, participants reported greater feelings of calm, relief, contentment, nostalgia, and empathy when chord progressions followed a predictable pattern. If his first three chords were predictable and his fourth chord unsurprising, even if it was relatively difficult to predict, it was generally less awkward and less predictable compared to other chord arrangements. Feelings of anxiety were reduced.

The results of this study “revealed how music affects not only our ears, but also our bodies and minds,” Daikoku said. “Music has the power to elicit these strong, embodied emotions, leading us to understand our inner emotional landscape in a way that words cannot.” With this understanding, someday That could lead to better mental health interventions, he says.