Running Up That Hill: The Stranger Things About Listening to Music
Jadon-Sean Sobejana
Illustrations by Iris Li
Diagram by Ella Larson
The interior of Max Mayfield’s mind is treacherous. She is trapped, plagued by her inner struggles, and drowning in a flood of vivid, harrowing memories. All seems hopeless. Suddenly, a beam of light splinters through the darkness and illuminates an escape route. Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush — Max’s favorite song — echoes through the shadows. The music sparks her memories of happiness, friends, family, and love. Now armed with renewed strength, Max overpowers her inner demons and manages to narrowly escape the danger in her own mind.
In this scene from the beloved TV series Stranger Things, we can clearly see a depiction of the emotional and behavioral significance of music [1]. While we may think of listening to music as a mere pleasure or hobby, it has another peculiar power: the potential for therapeutic value. Music therapy can, in fact, be used as a non-invasive approach to treat a variety of mental illnesses and disorders [1]. Listening to music activates a wide range of brain structures involved in modulating cognitive, motor, emotional, and motivational processes, making it a good candidate for therapy [2]. In order to grasp music therapy’s power as an effective alternative remedy to pharmacological interventions, it is first important to understand how sounds enter and interact with the brain.
Music to Our Ears
While the process of listening to music may seem instantaneous, there are many complex interactions between the ear and brain that occur as we listen to our favorite songs. Every sound we hear is made up of waves [3]. Imagine plucking the strings of a guitar and watching as the cords waver back and forth; vibrations emanate from where the strings are plucked and create the waves that we interpret as the sounds we hear. Next, they travel through the ear canal until they reach the inner ear, where they interact with a spiral structure called the cochlea and transform them into electrical signals. Within the cochlea, the vibrations cause small hair cells to oscillate back and forth, like palm trees swaying in the wind. The physical and alternating movement of these cells back and forth generates electrical energy, which travels through the auditory nerves into the brain. This conversion step is crucial, as the brain can only understand these signals as electrical impulses, and not vibrations.
Once auditory information passes through the ear, it begins to traverse the brain. Think of this process like a game of connect-the-dots, where each dot represents a part of the brain that the signal passes through. The electrical signals pass through the first dot, the auditory nerves in the back of your brain. Here, differences in auditory timing and intensity are combined to help you discern where the sounds are in your environment [4]. The next dot is a large fiber of nerves in the middle of your brain, where distinct auditory centers help you identify the source of sounds and combine many different auditory signals. The following stop on the path of dots is the thalamus, a specialized area that evaluates auditory information – determining a sound’s direction and location [4]. The final dot represents an area of the cerebral cortex, dubbed A1, which participates in the more specific processing of music [5]. Similar to the image revealed when you complete connect-the-dots, the auditory information processed in the A1 reveals to your brain the nature of the sound [6]. Only in the A1 can your brain separate the different components of auditory stimuli by frequency. For example, imagine all the different components of your favorite piece of music: the throbbing bass, the belting sopranos, and the strumming guitars. Each of these sounds is made of many different frequencies. The A1 isolates these frequencies for analysis and thoroughly processes components of the sound signal, such as pitch, quality, tone, and intensity [6]. In order to fully experience music, we need our A1 to combine all of these components together [7]. On the way to the A1, the same electrical signals that allow us to experience music also pass through and affect regions associated with emotions and memory [8]. This stimulation can have a profound impact on the way in which we experience music. Think about how music can influence our feelings and our moods — just putting on a certain song can make us feel a whole host of complex emotions! When music has reached the brain, we are able to connect our reaction to the music to the experience of listening, revealing our sentiments not only towards the song itself, but also towards what music reminds us of.
Escaping from the Upside Down: How Music Can Lift Your Spirits
Do you ever play a certain song to hype yourself up before doing something difficult? Or, does a specific playlist ever bring back vivid memories you made with a certain someone? Whatever reason you have for listening to music, many complex emotional responses can be evoked by the songs you hear. These responses are regulated by the region of the brain involved in the processing and controlling of your emotions and memory, known as the limbic system [8]. The limbic system, composed of the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and hippocampus, receives sound input from the A1, and makes associations between emotions, memories and the music we listen to [9].
One particularly intense version of this process becomes apparent when watching horror movies. For instance, have you ever noticed that the most terrifying part of a scary movie may be its loud and exaggerated sound effects? This fear can be attributed to activity in the brain’s amygdala, a structure primarily responsible for connecting emotional responses to specific stimuli and regulating feelings such as fear [10]. If tense music starts to play before a scary scene, your amygdala may prompt you to look away as fear builds and your heart rate quickens. However, regulating responses in distressing situations is not the amygdala’s only strength. Think back to a time when you first listened to your favorite song. Did you get goosebumps when the chorus started to play? Did you feel a slight shiver in your body when the melody began? These pleasurable feelings in response to music are also associated with your amygdala. In fact, the experience of feeling chills when you reach an emotional moment in a song is correlated with decreased blood flow to the amygdala [11]. Conversely, in disorders like depression and anxiety, symptoms are associated with an increase in blood flow to the amygdala. Therefore, using music therapy to decrease blood flow could be beneficial to counteracting these symptoms and treating different affective disorders. [12].
When you listen to music that evokes joy, your positive emotions are managed by the amygdala’s communication with a nearby area in the brain called the nucleus accumbens (NAc) [10]. Associated with motivation and emotion, the NAc is regarded as the most important pleasure center of the brain [10]. Activation of the NAc releases a chemical known as dopamine, involved in the production of pleasure and satisfaction [13]. Perhaps this is the mechanism behind Max’s use of music to regulate her emotions in Stranger Things, as she frequently listens to music as a means of escape from feelings of regret and anger. Accordingly, Max’s constant interaction with music seemed to enhance her self-esteem and lessen the severity of her negative emotions. Listening to music can be considered one of the most stimulating and rewarding human experiences, and this functional need is reflected structurally in our brains, with music exposure being correlated to increased dopamine levels in the NAc [14].
However, the song itself is not always the sole reason we experience emotion when listening to music; sometimes music recalls certain memories, which then evoke emotions specific to those experiences [8]. Most of us have certain songs that remind us of the good times of summer. Some of us even have that one song that always reminds us of a significant other. A region in your brain called the hippocampus enables you to recognize happy or sad memories through stimuli such as music [10]. Generally, the hippocampus is known to contribute to emotions and memory [9]. Unlike the amygdala and NAc, the hippocampus is associated with more positive emotions that are closely related to the music listening experience, like tenderness, peace, and joy. In addition, the hippocampus’s involvement in our positive emotions is connected with reductions in emotional stress [10]. Another distinguishing function of the hippocampus is its ability to create, maintain, or strengthen social attachments, which are the feelings of love, joy, or happiness we feel toward other things or people [10]. Stranger Things alluded to this concept when Max associated memories of friendship and love with her favorite song. Because music is capable of engaging our social attachments, along with various emotions and memories in the limbic system, music therapy is a viable option for alleviating and treating mental distresses that relate to such social and emotional functions [2].
How Music Can Keep You in Tune
“Music reaches parts of the brain words can’t,” says Max’s friend, Robin. This statement encompasses the basis for music therapy: the idea that music and language have always been two sides of the same coin, different mechanisms for communicating the same emotions [15]. Since musical stimuli can activate the limbic system and the rest of the brain, music therapy can harness its power o to potentially reduce the severity of neurological diseases or mental disorders such as depression and anxiety [1].
In practice, there are two types of music therapies that clinicians currently use: passive and active [1]. Passive music therapy includes patients listening carefully and sincerely to the music with the goal of genuinely connecting with the emotions of the song. It provides patients with a non-invasive therapeutic approach in which they can choose music on their own accord and honor their preferences [2]. Active music therapy, on the other hand, engages patients in music through singing, dancing, or the use of musical instruments [1]. Though both are beneficial in treating mental health symptoms, passive listening has been the most commonly used [2].
In recent years, more attention and resources have been focused on mental illness care due to the increase in diagnoses of anxiety and depression [16]. Depression is a common disorder that impairs social functioning and quality of life, and increases mortality [17]. The limbic structures have been shown to function irregularly in those with depressive symptoms [2]. Because music can activate and engage these structures, cognition, social function, and positive emotion can be better engaged in patients that have affective disorders [2]. Remember how playing music for a patient can reduce the blood flow to their amygdala? Increased blood flow to the amygdala is associated with increased symptoms of depression or anxiety, so by reducing blood flow, the effect of these symptoms can be lessened. Though music treatment has resulted in positive effects as a potential treatment for depression, it is important to note that more trials are needed to fully establish the neuroscientific basis for the therapeutic effects of music [9].
Think about the last time you were nervous. Now multiply that feeling times ten. Anxiety disorders cause this high level of intensity to occur even in situations that don’t warrant it [18]. The amygdala and hippocampus display increased activity when people listen to music [11]. Just as music therapy helps reduce symptoms of depression, it can result in decreased anxiety [2]. Mood, depression, and anxiety are all connected, which is why it is not surprising that music can affect them similarly [1]. Currently, music therapy is a growing field. It holds exciting promise in alleviating and treating symptoms of disorders that affect the way we feel [11].
Ending on the Right Note
In Stranger Things, what would have happened if Max didn’t hear her music? Confined in the abyss of her mind, overwhelmed by the ghosts of her past, she wouldn’t have survived without her favorite song. Stranger Things magnified how music can retrieve memories as music’s effect on the brain has been shown to have extreme therapeutic value. Music is accessible to everyone as a simple pastime, a stress reliever, or as some benign background noise, and formal music therapy exhibits significant potential as a treatment for mental health issues. The next time you hear your favorite song, or your least favorite song, consider how you feel—it might just give you some insight into the stranger things of your mind.
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