Good music makes us sweat more, according to a study that shows how it taps into ancient brain circuits.

The team that made the find believe such work could hone efforts to use music in medical treatment, since the work shows how it can influence the skin, heart and breathing.

For the study, neuroscientists looked at the brain’s response to piano sonatas played either by a computer or a musician and found that only the professional pianist increased the moistness of the listener’s skin, suggesting that the music was tapping a core part of the brain that controls basic processes such as heart rate and breathing.

When combined with a brain scan study, the research also showed why musicians can make us weep, when computers do not. While the computerised music generated an emotional response - particularly to unexpected chord changes - it was not as strong as listening to the same piece played by a professional pianist, which produced a bigger change in skin conductance, due to sweating and changes in the so called autonomic nervous system, which is controlled by the brain stem.

These changes originate from core structures in the brain that process emotions, such as the amygdala, almond-shaped structures on either side, said Dr Stefan Koelsch of Sussex University, who carried out the study with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig.

The findings that these small nuances, even a subtle change in key, can have a big effect were published in the journal PLoS One. And Dr Koelsch believes it could help develop "music therapy".

"A better understanding of the effects that music has on the brain and the rest of the body will also help to develop more systematic, and more widespread music-therapeutic applications. We just begin to discover how we can systematically influence activity of the skin, the heart, the lung, and the hormonal system (to name just a few) with music. I am quite sure that this will eventually turn out to be highly relevant for therapy."

For the study, they played excerpts from classical piano sonatas to 20 non-musicians and recorded electric brain responses and skin conductance responses.

Although the participants did not play instruments and considered themselves unmusical, their brains showed clear electric activity in response to musical changes (unexpected chords and changes in tonal key), which indicated that the brain was understanding the "musical grammar" in a similar way to normal grammar.

"The 'grammar response' did not differ between the computer and the pianist versions - not too much to our surprise, because these are rather cognitive, analytical processes,” he said.

"However, a subsequent brain-electric response - which usually follows the grammar response and reflects the attempt to understand the meaning of the musical passage - was clearly larger when pianists played. That is, our data show that pianists 'tell' us something when they play only by making use of emotional expression."

Thus the study revealed that the brain was more likely to look for musical meaning when the music was played by a pianist.

"The brain responses show that when a pianist plays a piece with emotional expression, the piece is actually perceived as meaningful by listeners, even if they have not received any formal musical training."

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