Ongoing History Daily: Your favourite song does strange things to your brain

Everyone gets an emotional and physical rush when a favourite song comes on. Those neurological and physical processes are very complex.

Our brains love to predict patterns in music. When we hear a great song, the brain physically synchronizes with those musical patterns by creating neural oscillations that spread throughout the body. Certain sounds and chord progressions are more powerful than others. For example, simple musical sounds create more stable neural patterns.

This could explain why certain music sounds pleasant to people of different cultures. It’s part of the hard wiring of our brains.

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