PsyPost reports:

While sharing a musical experience with a friend might not drastically alter your overall enjoyment of a song, it tends to synchronize your brain activity and emotional responses. A recent study published in the journal Cortex has found that listening to music with another person increases the moment-to-moment similarity of subjective pleasure and enhances neural alignment. These findings help explain how music acts as a powerful tool for social bonding and collective emotional experiences.

Human beings naturally use music as a social tool to connect with others. From singing lullabies to infants to gathering at large stadium concerts, music helps regulate emotions and foster a sense of group cohesion. The ability of music to align emotions and physical responses among audiences fulfills a basic human need for social connection.

Scientists recognize that both music and social interactions activate the brain’s reward centers. This shared activation suggests that the social setting in which people listen to music might alter the fundamental way the brain processes musical pleasure. The mesolimbic reward circuitry, a network in the brain responsible for feelings of intense pleasure, plays a major role in these experiences.

“We were interested in better understanding how sharing music influences both our emotions and our brain activity,” said study author Federico Curzel, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pavia, working with the Laboratory of Psychology of Aging and the MusiCognition lab. “Music is a powerful social tool that can promote bonding and a sense of togetherness, yet the underlying neural mechanisms of these shared experiences are still not well understood,” he explained. [Continue reading…]