Have you ever gotten chills from an exceptionally emotional song? Some new research suggests that it might be you – and not the music you’re listening to – that helps create these good vibes. Called frisson, a French word meaning “aesthetic chills,” these seemingly random sensations are completely natural, but not everyone is fortunate enough to experience them.
Better yet, there’s also a good chance you might be more emotionally intelligent than someone who doesn’t get these musically-induced goosebumps. An intriguing new study suggested that those of us who get goosebumps from listening to music just might be a little bit extraordinary:
The findings have come from University of Southern California PhD student Matthew Sachs, whose paper on the subject – ‘Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music’ – has been published in the Oxford Academic. Sachs argues that those who get goosebumps when listening to music have structural differences in the brain, with those individuals possessing “a higher volume of fibers that connects their auditory cortex to the areas associated with emotional processing, which means the two areas communicate better.”
In other words, if you’re the type of music listener who gets chills while listening to a particularly nostalgic song or an exceptionally moving part of a song (think the epic rising tide of sound at the end of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” or the inspired sax solo in Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland”), you are very likely tuned into your emotions in a way that others are not.
Now that I know the source of these chills, I’m off to a find some music that will get me some new ones. Call it a mission to free my frisson!
The Music Mom: Eileen Carey 