O que acontece com nosso cérebro quando ouvimos música: um estudo sobre preferência musical e estados emocionais

Abstract

The present work will discuss how the brain perceives music and how this perception relates to our musical choices. For this, we will initially address the physics of the sound wave and how this type of energy is encoded in neural signals by the human ear. In a second moment, we will present the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, with emphasis on the auditory and motor systems. Next, we will name the brain areas involved with the different aspects of musical perception and appreciation. Finally, we will present the results collected through a closed questionnaire obtained from musicians and non-musicians that aimed to evaluate the perception of consonance and dissonance for intervals and according to 'musical preference' and possible implications with emotional states of these students. We reproduce some results from the literature which shows that the intervals of 2m, 7M, and the tritone elicit greater displeasure, both in musicians and in non-musicians. We also note that music is used to reinforce the emotional state of listeners, that is, that people tend to choose songs with emotional valences similar to their 'state of mind' (congruent individuals). When they do not (incongruous), the preference for joyful songs in times of sadness far outweighs the choice for sad songs in times of joy. These proportions do not change in musicians and not musicians. However, we found evidence that congruent individuals are more sensitive to the judgment of consonant and dissonant sounds, that is, they present more significant difference between scores of 7M and octave. We will conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for music theory and the major scientific theories of aesthetics. We believe that the present work contributes to a deepening of musical theories based on the biological aspects of listening.