If music gives you chills, your brain is special

Some songssometimes remind us of times in our lives or extremely specific memories, so much so that our hair starts rising from the very first notes. This rare experience that some fear and others seek has recently been the topic of a study.

Matthew Sachs is a former student at the prestigious Harvard University who last year interviewed 20 students about this sensation. Half of the students admitted that they sometimes got goosebumps while listening to music. All respondents subsequently performed a brain scan.

The student noticed that the people who had the goosebumps while listening to a song did not have the same cerebral structure as the others. The study showed that the volume of nerve fibres connecting their auditory cortex to the areas dealing with emotions would actually be denser in their brain, which allows them to communicate more easily.

This is what Matthew Sachs explained to the website Neuroscience after his study was published on Oxford Academic. If you get goosebumps while listening to music, it means that you are able to feel certain emotions more intensely.

Matthew Sachs plans to conduct further studies on the impact that music can have on our brain and body. He thinks that music could help fight depression by restoring emotions previously suppressed by the patients’ symptoms. It has also been found that music can help to reduce stress and pain, while improving cognitive and motor skills, spatial-temporal learning, and the brain's ability to produce neurones (neurogenesis).