What are musical chills?
The constellation of symptoms typically reported when feeling musical chills while listening to music corresponds closely to an increase in arousal. This arousal particularly takes place in the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in such physiological effects as goosebumps.
Different songs give chills to different people
This project aims to investigate and build on evidence that chilling music engages the brain's noradrenergic system as indexed by pupillary measures. Pleasurable music arouses the intensive attention system and draws mental effort.
Chills are idiosyncratic and occur more commonly for personally familiar songs than for other songs that have been reported to evoke chills in other people.
We are currently investigating the role of other neuromodulators, via pharmacological agents, in the pleasurable response. Moreover, we investigate what specific musical features can be triggers for the chills.