Neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer considers the emotional power of music

神经科学家Jomh Lehrer对音乐之于情感的使用进行了思考

Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deeply. When listening to our favourite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots.

音乐为何能让我们有所感觉? 一方面，音乐是一种纯抽象的艺术形式，缺乏语言和具象的意思：然而，虽然音乐言之甚少，它仍然莫名其妙地深深打动我们。当我们听到最喜欢的歌曲时，我们的身体流露出情感被唤起的种种表现。我们眼睛的瞳孔放大，我们的脉博和血压上升，我们皮肤的电传导性下降，我们的小脑(负责身体运动的大脑区域)变得出奇地活跃。血液甚至重新流入到我们腿部的肌肉中。换句话说，声音刺激到了我们的生物性底层。

A recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by a research team in Montreal, Canada, marks an important step in revealing the precise underpinnings of 'the potent pleasurable stimulus' that is music. Although the study involves plenty of fancy technology, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ligand-based positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, the experiment itself was rather straightforward. After screening 217 individuals who responded to advertisements requesting people who experience `chills' to instrumental music, the scientists narrowed down the subject pool to ten. They then asked the subjects to bring in their playlist of favourite songs - virtually every genre was represented, from techno to tango - and played them the music while their brain activity was monitored. Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI), they were able to obtain an impressively exact and detailed portrait of music in the brain. The first thing they discovered is that music triggers the production of dopamine - a chemical with a key role in setting people's moods - by the neurons (nerve cells) in both the dorsal and ventral regions of the brain. As these two regions have long been linked with the experience of pleasure, this finding isn't particularly surprising.

由加拿大蒙特利尔的一个研究团队在《自然神经科学》上最近发表的一篇论文在揭示音乐这“强烈的快感刺激”的砩切根源上迈出了重要的一步。虽然研究使用了很多高大上的技术，包括功能性磁共振成像技术( fMRI)和基于配体的正电子发射型计算机断层显像 ( PET)扫描技术，实验本身是相当直观的。在刊登广告招募对器乐感到“寒意”的人之后，科学家们从217人中筛选出了 10名实验对象。接着他们要求被实验者拿出他们的最爱音乐列表——几乎每种类型的音乐都有，从电子音乐到探戈——然后播放音乐并监控他们的大脑。因为科学家们把两种方法结合使用 (PET和 fMRl)，他们能够获得极其准确和详细的脑中音乐图像。他们首先发现的是音乐能触发大脑背部和腹部区域神经细胞产生多巴胺，这种物质对人的情绪有重要的作用。因为人们已知这两个区域与快感体验有关，这一发现并无惊奇之处。

What is rather more significant is the finding that the dopamine neurons in the caudate - a region of the brain involved in learning stimulus-response associations, and in anticipating food and other 'reward' stimuli - were at their most active around 15 seconds before the participants' favourite moments in the music. The researchers call this the 'anticipatory phase' and argue that the purpose of this activity is to help us predict the arrival of our favourite part The question, of course, is what all these dopamine neurons are up to. Why are they so active in the period preceding the acoustic climax? After all, we typically associate surges of dopamine with pleasure, with the processing of actual rewards. And yet, this cluster of cells is most active when the 'chills' have yet to arrive, when the melodic pattern is still unresolved.

更加重要的是发现尾状核脑——负责学习刺激一反应关联的脑部区域，以及预测食物和其他“奖励”刺激——的多巴胺神经细胞在参与者的音乐至爱部分播放前15秒时处于最活跃的状态。研究人员把这称之为“预期阶段”，并认为这种活动的目的就是帮助我们预测我们最爱部分的到来。当然，问题就是这些多巴胺神经细胞是做什么用的。为什么它们会在音乐高潮“之前”如此活跃?毕竟，我们通常把多巴胺的激增与快感联系起来，伴随着对“真正”奖励的处理。然而，这些细胞却在“寒意”袭来之前最活跃，此时旋律的片断尚未到来。

One way to answer the question is to look at the music and not the neurons. While music can often seem (at least to the outsider) like a labyrinth of intricate patterns,it turns out that the most important part of every song or symphony is when the patterns break down, when the sound becomes unpredictable. If the music is too obvious, it is annoyingly boring, like an alarm clock. Numerous studies, after all, have demonstrated that dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what's going to happen next, then we don't get excited. This is why composers often introduce a key note in the beginning of a song, spend most of the rest of the piece in the studious avoidance of the pattern,and then finally repeat it only at the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound.

回答这一问题的一个方式是观察旮乐而非神经元。虽然音乐通常看上去(至少在外人看来)像一个复杂模式的迷宫，其实每首歌或交响乐最重要的部分却在模式被打破时，当声音变化无常时。如果音乐太明显，它就会很烦人，像一个闹钟。毕竟，无数研究表明多巴胺神经元会很快适应有规律的奖励。如果我们知道接下来要发生的事，我们就不会兴奋起来。这就是为什么作曲家经常在歌曲开头引入一个关键音，在歌曲的剩余部分避免使用这一个音，然后最终只在结束时重复一下。我们越是长时间听不到预期的音，当这个音重现的时候，我们的情感释放就越强烈，平安而归。

To demonstrate this psychological principle, the musicologist Leonard Meyer, in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music( 1956), analysed the 5th movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. Meyer wanted to show how music is defined by its flirtation with -but not submission to -our expectations of order. Meyer dissected 50 measures (bars) of the masterpiece, showing how Beethoven begins with the clear statement of a rhythmic and harmonic pattern and then, in an ingenious tonal dance, carefully holds off repeating it. What Beethoven does instead is suggest variations of the pattern.He wants to preserve an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us. Beethoven saves that chord for the end.

为了表明这一心理规律，音乐学家 Leonard Meyer在他经典的著作《音乐中的情感与意义》(1956年)中分析了贝多芬的弦乐四重奏升C小调Op.131第五乐章。Meyer想表明音乐是如何调动——而不是迎合一一我们对规律的预期的。 Meyer把这段名曲分解成了50个片断(小节),来展示贝多芬是如何以清晰的韵律和和谐的旋律开篇，然后以一段灵巧的音调舞动，精心地推迟复现这段旋律。相反 M多芬展示出了这种模式的变化。他想在自己的音乐中保存一些不确定的元素，使得我们的大脑去乞求他曾给予我们的那段旋律。见多芬把那段和弦一直留到了最后。

According to Meyer, it is the suspenseful tension of music, arising out of our unfulfilled expectations, that is the source of the music's feeling. While earlier theories of music focused on the way a sound can refer to the real world of images and experiences一its 'connotative' meaning -Meyer argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This 'embodied meaning' arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores.It is this uncertainty that triggers the surge of dopamine in the caudate, as we struggle to figure out what will happen next. We can predict some of the notes, but we can't predict them all,and that is what keeps us listening, waiting expectantly for our reward, for the pattern to be completed.