Frisson · musical chills · two spots
Frisson lit the caudate before the chill. The accumbens lit when it landed.
You already play a song you love and wait for the goosebumps.
You want to know why the body does that.
Frisson is the name for those musical chills. Goosebumps rise on a song you already know.
You already know the song
You put that track on because you want the rise on your arms. You know the bar where it happens. You lean in a little before it comes, the way you lean before a chorus you have sung a hundred times.
That lean is part of why the body answers, because the rise starts before the skin shows it.
Keep the song. What you can watch now, on a track you already love, is the stretch of seconds before the chill.
The first spot lights before the chill
Salimpoor's group, with Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, and Zatorre, printed this in Nature Neuroscience in 2011. The paper title is “Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.”
They asked people to bring songs that already gave them chills, then they watched the brain while those songs played.
About 15 seconds before the chill, a scan showed the right caudate lighting. The caudate is a real place in the brain, a little deeper than the outer fold you can picture under the hair. That stretch is the part you already feel coming, when you know the next line and your skin has not answered yet.
They called those 15 seconds anticipation. You already know that stretch if you have a song that always gets you.
The scan they used is called PET, a scan that tracks a chemical, and the chemical they tracked is dopamine.
Read the paper at doi.org/10.1038/nn.2726 and at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21217764.
The second spot lights when goosebumps arrive
When the chill landed, the same scan showed the right accumbens lighting. The accumbens is another real place, next to that first spot. People also write it NAcc, short for nucleus accumbens.
You can hold both pictures at once: 15 seconds of knowing the next line on a song you already love, then the goosebumps when that line arrives.
Two places light at two times on the same loved song.
Keep the 40 Hz listen if you use it
40 Hz is a nearby different listen you can keep. Hertz is how many times the sound shakes in one second, so 40 Hz is forty shakes in one second.
You can keep that listen. This page is about the chill on a song you already love.
Open the 40 Hz page if you want that story. Open the delayed-choice page if you want the light test where they hid which path. More files sit in the Library.
Questions that come up when the song already works
Do I need a new song?
Use a song that already gives you goosebumps. The study used songs people already picked.
Do I need a scanner?
The scan is how they saw the two spots. Your job this week is the song.
Can I keep 40 Hz?
Keep it if you already use it. Play the loved song as its own listen.
Play that song this week
This week, play a song you already love. Notice the seconds before the chill.
Keep the 40 Hz listen if you use it.
You came because you already chase that rise on the skin, and now you can see two places lighting at two times on a song you already know. Play the song this week and watch those seconds before the chill.
If the week feels too heavy, call a doctor you trust.
Sources
Salimpoor V.N., Benovoy M., Larcher K., Dagher A., Zatorre R.J. “Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.” Nature Neuroscience 2011;14(2):257-262. DOI 10.1038/nn.2726. PMID 21217764. 217 screened. 10 selected. 8 PET after 2 discarded. Ages 19-24, mean 20.8. Anticipation = 15 s. Right caudate during anticipation 14, -6, 20 t=3.2. Right NAcc when the chill landed 8, 10, -8 t=2.8. Mean 3.7 chills/excerpt. doi.org/10.1038/nn.2726 · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21217764
Blood 2001 PNAS. Earlier different work. n=10. Chills 77%.