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The Physiological,

Psychoacoustical, and

Neuropsychological Correlates

of Musical Chills !

Arielle Herman Professor Marilyn Boltz

Psych 360 - The Psychology of Music 3 November 2014

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . 3

2. What are Musical Chills? . . . . . . . . 4

2.1 - Goldstein (1980) . . . . . . . 4

2.2 - Craig (2005) . . . . . . . . 7

3. Psychoacoustical and Physiological Correlates . . . . . 10

3.1 - Sloboda (1991) . . . . . . . . 10

3.2 - Guhn, Hamm, & Zentner (2007) . . . . . 13

4. Neuropsychological and Personality Correlates . . . . . 17

4.1 - Blood & Zatorre (2001) . . . . . . . 17

4.2 - Nusbaum & Silvia (2011) . . . . . . 21

5. Summary of Significant Findings in Correlates of Musical Chills . . 24

6. Future Directions . . . . . . . . . 27

Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . 31

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1. Introduction

“Wow, her voice gave me chills.” “I got chills reading that.” “This story will chill you to

the bone.” Chances are, expressions such as these are not unfamiliar to you. People frequently

reference the extraordinary phenomenon of “chills”, but rarely do we pause to consider what this

sensation truly means. Chills can be provoked by a wide variety of stimuli—a beautiful

landscape that overcomes its witness with awe, a heart-wrenching scene in a drama, a touching

sermon, a deeply stirring musical passage, even a poignantly worded phrase that one encounters

in conversation, if it resonates powerfully enough to shoot a shiver through the spine. In all of

these scenarios, the experience of a chill is elicited by a stimulus that possesses transcendental

and powerful emotional implications. But how does a pretty painting or an enjoyable song lead

to the evocation of joy, sadness, or awe? Many researchers hypothesize that the intense

emotional experiences that occur when we are confronted with certain aesthetic stimuli are

mediated by individual cognitive associations to real-world events or individuals (Konečni,

2008; Grewe et al., 2007). This might account for the complex, individualized nature of these

experiences and the variety of chill patterns that are observed between the subjects of empirical

studies (Goldstein, 1980).

While our most salient experiences with chills are likely those that were accompanied by

a heightened emotional experience, it is important to consider that aesthetic chills also occur

frequently in the absence of any significant emotions, in the presence of only an aesthetic

stimulus. This phenomenon has been described as “aesthetic awe”: recognizing or being moved,

in some capacity, by the “sublimity”—the “beauty, rarity, and physical grandeur”—of an

aesthetic stimulus, and is often accompanied by the physiological sensation of thrills/chills

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(Konečni, 2005; Konečni, 2008). Various researchers have suggested that, above all else (the

structure or features of the stimulus, personal cognitive associations, current emotional state,

etc.), the strongest factor in determining whether or not an individual experiences chills as a

result of an aesthetic stimulus is their focus of attention. In order for a physiological or

emotional response to occur, it is necessary for the experiencer to attend closely to the relevant

stimuli (Grewe, 2007; Konečni, 2005). When focused attention is directed at an aesthetic

stimulus, a complex interaction of structural features, personal and environmental factors, and

neurophysiological elements allow for the occurrence of the powerful psychophysiological

experience of thrills/chills. Music is the most reliable and consistent aesthetic stimulus for

eliciting the sensation of chills. This paper will explore various dimensions of musical chills,

reviewing past studies on its physiological, psychoacoustical, and neuropsychological correlates.

2. What are Musical Chills?

2.1 - Goldstein (1980)

Stanford University’s Avram Goldstein was the first researcher to define the phenomenon

of “chills”, with his 1980 paper, “Thrills in response to music and other stimuli”. In order to

create a thorough and multidimensional definition of the sensation, Goldstein administered a

series of questionnaires to his sample populations, labeled groups a, b, and c. Groups a and b

received unstructured, open-ended questionnaires, whose results were then assessed and

compiled to design standardized checklists that were presented to group c. In administering the

questionnaires, Goldstein sought to gain insight on whether the phenomenon of thrills is rare or

common, how the sensation is described by individuals who experience it, and what kinds of

stimuli trigger it. In addition to questionnaire research, he also conducted experimental research,

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in attempts to control and empirically observe the phenomenon. Experimental studies were used

to assess individual patterns of thrill responses to passages of music, and to test the hypothesis

that endorphins, a class of opioid peptides, mediate the emotional reactions that correspond to or

bring about chills. Goldstein tested this notion by performing a preliminary study in which

participants were injected with either naloxone—an opioid receptor antagonist—or saline, and

measures of pre- and post-injection chill responses to musical passages were taken.

The results of Goldstein’s questionnaire research indicated that thrills were a fairly

common occurrence in his sample, with 53%, 80%, and 90% of respondents in groups a, b, and

c, respectively, indicating that they had felt the “thrill” sensation before. In attempts to account

for the sample self-selection bias that had likely occurred in this study (individuals who are

interested in music choosing to enroll in a study about music), Goldstein extrapolated these

proportions to projected percentages of his target population (53%, 24%, and 63%, for groups a,

b, and c, respectively). The data also indicated that, even in course of the week preceding this

study, chills had been a fairly common occurrence in participants. Of the subjects in group c,

19% indicated that they had felt a thrill that day, 38% that they had felt a thrill either that day or

the day before, and 59% that they had experienced a thrill within the past seven days. No gender

differences were apparent in the data at hand.

The sensation of an aesthetic “thrill” was commonly described using a particular set of

descriptors. Goldstein later used these terms to sculpt his definition of the phenomenon.

Respondents reported that a thrill feels like a “chill, shudder, tingling, or tickling” sensation,

often accompanied by goosebumps or a feeling that one’s hair is standing on end. Many also

reported the feeling of having a lump in their throat, as well as weeping, sighing, palpitation, or

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tension of the jaw and facial muscles, and that they are generally accompanied by intense

emotional experiences. Respondents noted that thrills were often fleeting, lasting only one to

five seconds, but that more intense thrills had a longer duration and a tendency to spread

throughout the body. According to participant responses, the most common origins of a chill are

the upper spine and the back of the neck (67% and 62% of respondents, respectively). Some

respondents also mentioned the shoulders, lower spine, and scalp as points of origin (with a

frequency of 25% each). In regards to spreading, radiating, or sweeping, respondents most

commonly reported having experienced the spreading of a chill upward over the scalp (65%),

over the scalp and the face (39%), outward over the shoulders (61%), down the shoulders and

arms (63%), and down the spine (52%). Also reported were chills sweeping forward to the chest

(34%), genital region (29%), thighs (30%), and legs (28%).

In the preliminary study, volunteers listened to a musical piece of their choice both before

and after receiving an injection of either saline or naloxone. Subjects were told to raise one, two,

or three fingers when they felt the onset of a chill, depending on the intensity of the chill

response they experienced. Duration was recorded based on the length of time for which a

subject’s finger was raised. It was observed that each subject tended to display the same pattern

of chill responses for each audition of one passage, and that two specific subjects can have

personally consistent but comparatively very different chill response patterns to the same

passage. Goldstein hypothesized that this was a result of varying perceptions of the emotional

content of the pieces. Some subjects reported that the chill-eliciting stimulus was a powerful

emotional response to a certain musical passage or structure that holds a strong association with

an emotionally charged person or event in their lives.

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Based on physiological descriptions of the origin and subsequent spreading of thrill

sensations, Goldstein offers conjectures about the neurological underpinnings of these

sensations. He hypothesizes that, although the origin of the physical chill is felt on the surface of

the body, the thrill sensation is perceived when electrical stimulation occurs at and spreads out

from a central neural focus in the brain. He states that, in order to elicit a bodily chill sensation,

this structure must have somatotopic organization, with neural circuits involving the limbic

system and central autonomic regulation. He adds that the sensory inputs must have bilateral

representation, since chill sensations are not confined to one half of the body, and suggests the

amygdala as a possible mediator for sensory input, due to its “role in emotional functions,

autonomic discharge, and discrimination of sensory modalities” (Goldstein, 1980). He also

states that, because of their euphorigenic properties and the implication of opioid receptors for

the limbic system, it is a safe assumption to assert that the opioid peptides known as endorphins

mediate emotional responses involving the autonomic nervous system. Data from the

preliminary naloxone experiments supports this argument, as the experience of music-elicited

thrills was attenuated by intravenous naloxone administration in some participants.

2.2 - Craig (2005)

The physiological correlates of musically-induced chills have also been empirically

measured using an experimental design. A 2005 study by Craig, for example, aimed to

determine if significant changes in physiological measures of the sympathetic division of the

autonomic nervous system correspond to passages that elicit more self-reported chills.

Subjective and objective measures were taken to assess changes in three physiological variables

during the experience of musically-induced chills. The three variables were piloerection (the

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erection of hairs and goosebumps on the skin), skin temperature (dilation or constriction of blood

vessels just below the surface of the skin), and the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) (sweat gland

activation in hands and feet as a measure of nervous system arousal or activation). Craig cited a

handful of studies that had previously demonstrated a link between GSR and emotional

responses to stimuli.

The study consisted of 32 participants, 16 music majors (8 female, 8 male) and 16 non-

music majors (8 female, 8 male). Subjects were instructed to bring one piece of music that

reliably elicited chills each time they listened to it. At the experimental session, they listened to

this familiar piece through headphones, followed by an unfamiliar piece selected by the

experimenters. Baseline trials in which subjects were presented with Gregorian chants not

intended to elicit chills preceded and followed the presentation of these stimuli. Subjects were

instructed to raise their right index finger at the onset of a chill, and hold it up until the chill had

subsided. Physiological measures were taken continuously throughout the trials. Piloerection

was assessed on the right forearm by an observer who was separated from the participant by a

divider. The participant’s right arm was placed on the observer’s side of the partition through a

hole in the divider. Skin temperature was measured from the left upper arm using a probe, and

GSR was measured using electrodes placed on the left index and middle finger. Following the

experimental session, a questionnaire was administered to assess whether or not chills had been

experienced, the intensity of the chills, and whether the chills experienced under the

experimental conditions were representative of typical experiences of chills. The questionnaire

also asked participants to indicate whether or not piloerection had occurred, and where in the

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body it was felt, as well as any sensations of coldness, increases in mental alertness, or decreases

in tension and anxiety that had occurred during the chills.

The mean number of chills experienced by participants was 8.5, with an average duration

of 7.2 seconds, and a range of 1-42 seconds. Three individuals did not experience chills at all

throughout the duration of the study, and their data was excluded in the results section. 89% of

participants reported chills while listening to the familiar piece, 75% during the unfamiliar piece,

and 68% during both pieces. Chills were felt in the arms (89% of participants), hands and

fingers (63%), neck (60%), face and head (60%), and spine (48%). Piloerection was reported by

79% of participants, and was felt on the arms (73%), back of the neck (60%), and legs (60%),

accompanied by a feeling of coldness (79%), increased mental alertness (71%), and relaxation of

tension and anxiety (75%). 52% of the reported chill experiences were accompanied by

piloerection, and the phenomenon was observed in 57% of the participants who had reported

chills during the experiment. No significant changes were found in skin temperature throughout

the course of the study. 100% of recorded GSR levels were higher when participants were

experiencing chills than they were in the preceding and subsequent moments, as well as the

baseline measures. This indicates increased activation of the sympathetic division of the

autonomic nervous system during the physiological occurrence of chills.

The data indicates that chills correlate with significant changes in GSR and can

correspond to the occurrence of piloerection. Although 79% of participants experienced a cold

sensation during chills and piloerection, no significant changes in body temperature were found

in this experiment, indicating that the sensation of coldness that accompanies chills and

piloerection is not linked to the actual body temperature of a participant. Therefore, chills are

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not the result of body temperature changes, but rather of a general activation of the sympathetic

nervous system. Interestingly, participants who reported piloerection during the experiment

(83%) rated chills as moderately, very, or extremely intense, and reported an average chill

duration of 12.5 seconds, while 100% of participants who did not report piloerection rated chills

as only moderately or slightly intense, with an average duration of 3.8 seconds. This correlation

implies that piloerection can be used as a measure of chill intensity. Another important

implication of this study is that emotional responses to music can be measured in a quantifiable

manner by assessing the subjective and objective experience of chills in a listener.

3. Psychoacoustical and Physiological Correlates

3.1 - Sloboda (1991)

Sloboda was interested in determining the musical structures that most consistently and

reliably evoke specific physiological responses in a listener. Similar to Goldstein’s operational

definition of thrills/chills, Sloboda described the phenomenon of chills as a “pleasant physical

sensation often experienced as a ‘shiver’ or a ‘tingle’ running from the nape of the neck down

the spine, [...] usually accompanied by heightened emotion” (Sloboda, 1991). The paper begins

with a discussion of the empirical difficulties that emerge when attempts are made to measure a

construct as abstract as emotional experience. Many current methods involve asking participants

identify the musical mood of a piece. Sloboda points out that a major confound of this approach

is the fact that the intended mood of a piece of music can be perceived without the listener

adopting the feelings themselves. He asserts that, because chills are discrete, observable, fairly

unmistakable sensations that occur as a direct result of an emotional experience, they might serve

as a more reliable measure for the empirical analysis of strong emotions.

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Respondents were 83 British adults, 34 of whom were professional musicians, 33

amateur performance musicians, and 16 casual music listeners with no previous musical training.

Data collection for the study involved participants filling out a rather intensive questionnaire,

which presented a list of twelve physical reactions and asked that participants rate the frequency

with which each had been experienced in response to music in the past five years. The next part

of the questionnaire instructed participants to nominate up to three pieces of music in which they

recalled experiencing one or more of the listed physical sensations in the past five years. They

were asked to elaborate on these experiences and to include references to the musical score, with

measure numbers, if possible. An important confound of this study to take into account is the

fact that completing the questionnaire was a time-consuming activity that required a lot of

investment, and could have therefore lead to a self-selecting sample bias in the data. This

weakness in the external validity of the study might impair the generalizability of the results.

The most commonly reported physical responses were shivers down the spine (90%),

laughter (88%), a lump in the throat (80%), and tears (85%). Of the 83 participants, 83% were

able to nominate a song, yielding a total of 165 song nominations. Of these, 65 were classical

vocal, 28 popular vocal, 67 classical instrumental, and 6 popular instrumental. According to the

self-reports, the majority of subjects experienced the same physical responses every time they

heard the song, even those who had heard the song over 50 times. Participants were able to

locate the musical event that correlated with their physical reaction for 57 of the 165 songs. The

experimenters excluded 19 of these 57 excerpts because participants did not indicate having

experienced a specific physical response to these excerpts on at least 20 occasions. Musical

analysis was performed on the 38 remaining excerpts (19 instrumental, 17 vocal). Results

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indicated that tears were most reliably provoked by melodic appoggiaturas, or musical

embellishments/ornaments to the melody of a song that generally appear in the form of a very

fast series notes around a central note. Melodic or harmonic sequences and harmonic movement

through the cycle of fifths to the tonic also provoked tears on occasion. Chills were most reliably

elicited by sudden changes in harmony, such as an unexpected enharmonic change or the

presentation of a new or unprepared harmony. Sudden dynamic or textural changes were also

able to elicit chills, especially when presented concurrently with sudden harmonic changes.

Excerpts that produced a racing heart were less frequently observed, but this physiological

response was most reliably triggered by acceleration and syncopation.

The most significant finding of this study is that specific musical structures tend to elicit

distinct physiological reactions across many listeners (tears, chills, laughter, increased heart rate),

and furthermore, that these reactions can be quantified and empirically observed as a way of

investigating emotional responses to musical stimuli. One question that is raised by the results of

the study is how distinct physiological responses (chills, tears) are triggered by specific musical

structures. Sloboda presents one possible explanation by conjecturing that certain musical

structures reflect specific emotionally charged events in their temporality and arrangement of

mood-related stimuli. “For instance, tears may relate to emotions provoked by endings (whether

loss or relief), and the precipitating musical structures may be those which encourage the listener

to anticipate an impending resolution or release of tension” (Sloboda, 1991). He also notes that

some respondents claimed that the intensity of emotions felt with the accompaniment of music is

much greater than the emotional intensity than can be achieved in daily life without it, and that

this emotional intensity has positive psychological consequences for motivation and self-image.

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3.2 - Guhn, Hamm, & Zentner (2007)

It is important to consider that, when participants select their own music for studies on

emotional responses to musical passages, a personal history or cognitive association could be at

play in the supposedly emotion-induced chills they are experiencing. In pursuit of the “purest”

chill experiences possible, Guhn, Hamm, and Zentner wanted to control for this confound, which

they refer to as the ‘This is our song’ phenomenon. In other words, they sought to eliminate the

impact of personal associations on chill responses so they could obtain the least confounded

empirical data about physiological and psychoacoustical correlates of musical chills.

Preliminary work was done to identify musical passages that were as unfamiliar as

possible but as likely as possible to evoke chills in the listeners. The experimenters obtained 243

ratings of 30 two-minute classical music excerpts on their familiarity and an array of affective

labels, two of which referred to chill experiences. They selected the six musical passages that

had received the highest chill ratings and the lowest reported familiarity and presented these

excerpts to 27 participants, all of whom had indicated a high susceptibility to experiencing

musical chills. Listeners were instructed to press and hold a button when they felt a chill,

releasing it when the chill had subsided. The researchers observed similar patterns of chill

responses in the listeners, and were able to identify specific chill passages in each of the songs.

Subjects of the study were 27 psychology students from the University of Greifswald.

The six passages were presented to the subjects through headphones, and they were instructed to

indicate chills with button presses as previously described. Skin conductance response (SCR)

and heart rate were assessed using electrodes on the right palm. Results were reported for three

passages: Mozart’s Piano Concerto (K488), 2nd movement, measures 1-20, Chopin’s 1st Piano

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Concerto, 2nd movement, measures, 1-31, and Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, measures 1-25. The

frequency and pattern of chills in the experimental group were similar to the data from the

preliminary study, with subjects’ reported chills frequently overlapping with the measures that

had been previously identified as chill passages. The absolute peak SCR amplitudes for each

stimulus were consistently larger for participants who reported chills during the identified chill

passage of that stimulus than for those who did not. SCR peak amplitudes for those who

experienced chills were, on average, 4.2 times greater than SCR baseline fluctuations. They

were also greater than the SCR peak amplitudes of participants who did not report chills during

the chill passage. This data suggests that larger increases in skin conductance are associated with

the chill experiences themselves. The mean heart rate of all participants showed the greatest

increase and the highest value over the chill passages of each excerpt. This trend also held true

on an individual level, with the maximum heart rate values and the greatest change in heart rate

for each participant corresponding to the chill passages. The effect was strongest for participants

who had experienced a chill over these passage.

After performing a musical analysis of the chill passages, the researchers discovered that

they all shared a variety of musical features. All were from slow movements of the song from

which they were extracted. All contained an alternation or contrast between a solo instrument

and an orchestra. A sudden or gradual increase in volume was evident in all of the passages. For

example, in the Mozart excerpt, a piano solo and combined orchestral section are followed by a

sudden forte of all of the orchestral instruments, marking the beginning of the chill passage.

Alternating piano and orchestra sections in the Chopin piece are followed by the orchestra and

piano reaching forte together at the chill passage. In the Bruch excerpt, a soft orchestral

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introduction and alternating orchestra and cello parts are followed by a loud cello entrance and a

loud orchestral chord immediately after the entrance of the cello. All of the chill-inducing

passages also possess an expansion of frequency range in either the high or the low register, with

violins repeating the melody line one octave higher in the Mozart chill passage, a double bass

section adding a lower octave in the Chopin passage, and a leap up of one octave in the solo cello

part in Bruch.

Another musical feature common to all of the identified chill passages is a harmonically

unusual progression that deviates briefly from traditional, predictable, or expected patterns.

These musical structures can create a sense of tonal ambiguity or anticipation. For example, the

Mozart chill passage includes a chromaticism (a deceptive cadence, or sequence of unexpected

notes) and a tonicization (tonic usage of a pitch other than the main tonic, or tonal center, of the

key) before returning to the original tonic, as well as orchestral instruments concurrently playing

lines that had previously overlapped harmonically. In the Chopin piece, the chill passage

contains modulation (the change from one key, generally the tonic, to another), a sequence of

harmonic progressions with chord inversions (chords in which the leading note of the chord is

played down an octave as the bass note of the chord), and an augmented V7 chord (a chord that

seeks resolution, and thus creates a sense of suspension). These musical structures conjure an

anticipation for musical resolution in the listener. According to the authors, tonal ambiguity is

achieved in the chill passage of the Bruch piece. Prior to the chill passage, the listener is

presented with a constant back-and-forth between two degrees of the diatonic scale (the tonic (D

minor) and the mediant (F major)). During the chill passage, when the cello and the orchestra

play their sudden entrances, Bruch directly juxtaposes an A chord, the root of the dominant (the

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fifth degree of the diatonic scale), and the F major mediant, and then returns, via a cadence (a

sequence of resolving notes, typically placed at the end of a musical phrase), to the tonic (D

minor). This confusing progression creates a sense of tonal ambiguity.

The authors state that, as a whole, all three chill passages contain a specific interplay of

harmonic and melodic progressions. In the Mozart passage, the melody line is repeated one

octave up, along with a chromatic, harmonic accompaniment that turns the main melody’s notes

into suspension notes rather than harmonic notes. The melodic line of the Chopin piece has

some chromatic elements, and the melody transitions into a suspension via a semi-tone step from

F sharp to F double sharp that changes a V chord to a V7 chord and creates a suspension note.

As described previously, the Bruch chill passage contains a striking pattern change, in which the

melodic line pattern (the piece starts on D, transitions to D minor, then moves to G and then G

minor) suddenly deviates (starts on A and transitions to an F major chord).

The authors clarify that no musical feature on its own will elicit chills in a listener. To

summarize the musicological data that was presented above, all passages that had been identified

as chill-inducing passages in the preliminary study possessed the following musical attributes:

they occurred during slow movements of the piece from which they were an excerpt, they

featured contrast and alternation between solo instruments and an orchestra, they contained a

sudden or gradual increase in volume (crescendo), an expansion in register in either a high or

low range, and possessed harmonically and melodically peculiar progressions that sparked

sensations of tonal ambiguity or musical tension. Because many of these attributes are based on

musical norms established by Western musical culture, results would likely be different for

different cultures. Overall, chill-inducing passages consist of a combination of melodic,

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harmonic, dynamic, structural, and acoustic elements that create a sense of deviation from

patterns previously established in the musical excerpts.

As noted by the authors, performing research on this topic is a challenging task because

of its interdisciplinary nature: it requires knowledge in psychology, physiology, and music

analysis. Little research has been done on the subject, and a fraction of that research has been

controlled to the liking of these researchers. Unlike other studies on the phenomenon of musical

chills, extensive preliminary research was performed to identify unfamiliar passages that possess

a high likelihood of eliciting chills on the basis of their musical structures only. It was thus

unlikely that chill responses were confounded by personal associations with memories or

individuals of emotional value. Physiological data indicated that the greatest increases in heart

rate and SCR corresponded to the passages that had been identified as chill-inducing passages in

the preliminary study. Although the response was stronger for participants who experienced a

chill during the chill passages, all participants showed increased physiological reactions over

chill passages. The authors state that the degree to which participants experience chills is likely

the result of an interaction of stimulus traits, personal traits, and contextual factors.

4. Neuropsychological and Personality Correlates

4.1 - Blood & Zatorre (2001)

In their 2001 study, Blood and Zatorre sought to investigate the neural correlates of

intensely pleasurable responses to music in order to gain more insight into the neurological basis

of music-related emotion. The issue of observing, measuring, and analyzing emotional

experiences is a tricky topic in the field of neuroscience because it is difficult to obtain empirical

data on the way an individual feels. There also exists a multitude of confounds surrounding self-

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report and the reliability of subjective descriptions of psychological experiences, as well as the

language used to convey them. Blood and Zatorre observed that musical chills have the potential

to provide a sound model for the objective study of emotional responses to music because they

are clear, discrete events that are easy to reproduce in an individual who experiences them. In

this study, positron emission tomography (PET scan) was used to measure changes in regional

cerebral blood flow (rCBF) while subjects listened to chill-inducing music of their selection.

Five male and five female McGill students were recruited for the study, aged 20-30, each

with at least eight years of musical training. In order to increase the likelihood that intense

emotional responses would be evoked by the music, Blood and Zatorre did not use standardized

pieces of music, but rather instructed participants to bring a piece that elicits intense emotions in

them and reliably evokes chills upon listening to it. They also asked subjects to indicate that the

piece did not have any emotional memories attached to it, such that the emotional responses

elicited by the passages would be intrinsic to the music itself. In each trial, one of four stimuli

was presented to the participant: a 90-second excerpt of the song they had selected, a 90-seconds

excerpt of a control song (one of the other participant’s song choices), or one of two baselines

(amplitude-matched noise and silence). Physiological measures were performed via a PET scan,

and heart rate (HR), electromyogram (EMG), respiration depth (RESP), electrodermal response,

and skin temperature were measured using an F1000 polygraph instrumentation system. A

questionnaire was administered after each scan, asking subjects to rate “chills intensity” (0-10),

“emotional intensity” (0-10), and “unpleasant vs. pleasant” (-5 to 5).

Subjects reported chills during 77% of the scans that featured their song selection. Trials

during which subjects experienced the greatest number of chills corresponded to the most

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significant increases in HR, EMG, and RESP relative to these measures for control trials,

suggesting that increased psychophysiological activity occurred when participants listened to

highly chill-eliciting passages. On a neurological level, rCBF changes were observed in brain

structures associated with reward circuitry, displaying a positive systematic relationship between

activation of these brain regions and the reported intensity of chill experiences. For higher chill

intensity ratings, increased rCBF was observed in the left ventral striatum (includes the nucleus

accumbens and plays important role in processing rewarding and reinforcing stimuli), the left

dorsomedial midbrain (includes the ventral tegmental area and has implications for arousal and

goal-driven behavior), the bilateral insula (activated when drug addicts experience triggers for

cravings), right orbitofrontal cortex (connected to nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area;

associated with reward response and learning of stimulus-reward relationship), right thalamus

(sensory perception and motor control), anterior cingulate cortex (reward-based decision-making

and learning), supplementary motor area (motor control), and left cerebellum (motor control).

For these same passages, decreases in rCBF were observed in the right amygdala (fear, anxiety,

aversive behavior), the left hippocampus/amygdala (inhibition, memory), and the ventral medial

prefrontal cortex (decision-making, regulation of emotion). In short, measures of rCBF showed

increased blood flow to areas responsible for such functions as the processing of rewarding and

reinforcing stimuli, goal-driven behavior, craving and reward responses, reward-based decision-

making, and motor control, and decreased blood flow in regions associated with fear, inhibition,

emotion regulation, and decision-making. On a general functional level, the results of this study

indicate that exposure to chill-inducing musical passages leads to greater activation of neural

circuits involved in reward-based behavior and emotions, and diminished activation of the neural

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circuitry involved in fear, inhibition, and decision-making that is not influenced by reward

biases. The authors note that the interaction between decreased rCBF in in the amygdala and

increased rCBF in the ventral striatum may have an overall effect of decreasing negative and

inhibitory emotions while activating and increasing the influence of reward pathways.

These same structures are involved in physiological responses to biologically significant

stimuli such as food and sex, and the mechanism of many drugs of abuse involve the artificial

activation of these pathways. For example, the euphorigenic properties of cocaine administration

in cocaine-dependent subjects are associated with increased rCBF to the nucleus accumbens,

ventral tegmental area, thalamus, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex, and decreased rCBF to the

left amygdala and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Just as in the study at hand, rCBF

increased in brain structures that relate to reward-based behavior and decreased in regions

associated with evaluative processes that would likely be less susceptible to the influence of

reward-related biases (for example, an addict choosing to use cocaine due to its immediately

rewarding physiological effects rather than evaluating the overall benefits—or lack thereof—and

deciding not to ingest the substance).

Dopamine and opioid systems have been shown to be the main neurotransmitters

involved in reward-related activity in these regions of the brain. Underlying the reward response

to all naturally rewarding stimuli (food, sex, etc.) and to euphorigenic or abusable drugs is

dopaminergic activity in either the nucleus accumbens or the ventral tegmental area. Studies on

self-administration of intravenous cocaine and heroin in rats show that the self-administration

behavior correlates strongly with increased rCBF to the nucleus accumbens, which is rich in

opioid receptors. In addition, it is believed that efferent projections from the nucleus accumbens,

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consisting primarily of opioid receptors, are implicated directly in reward-related behavior.

These findings are supported and translated into the realm of music by the preliminary study

performed in the Goldstein (1980) experiment that was explicated earlier in this paper. Results

of this study demonstrated that injections of the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone attenuated

chill responses in some participants. Blood and Zatorre noted that the coordinates of the ventral

striatum activity peak in this study overlie the coordinates of the nucleus accumbens in the

Talairach atlas, a three-dimensional coordinate grid that maps the location of brain structures.

This provides support for the presence of reward-related activity in the opioid-receptor-rich

nucleus accumbens of participants in this study that functionally mirrors activity in the

aforementioned cocaine and heroin studies.

4.2 - Nusbaum & Silvia (2011)

Researchers have also investigated how personality traits might predict and mediate

aesthetic chills in response to music. In a 2007 paper, one of the developers of the Big Five

Personality Test states that asking participants if they have ever experienced aesthetic chills is

one of the best markers of the Openness to Experience personality factor. He also states that

there is a term for the sensation in all 40 of the languages into which the item was translated for

the purposes of the test, and in all 51 of the cultures examined, the test item that assessed a

respondent’s experience of chills served as one of the best predictors of a respondent’s total score

on the openness trait. This suggested that “aesthetic chills appear to be a universal emotional

experience” (McCrae, 2007).

Intrigued by the high degree of variability in people’s tendency to experience chills in

previous experimental studies, Nusbaum and Silvia aimed to assess the personality factors that

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mediate the association between musical chills and openness to experience. The two categories

of personality traits that they explored were participants’ music preferences and their experience

and engagement with music. It is known that individuals who rank highly in openness tend to

enjoy a larger assortment of musical genres than do those who scored lower. It has also been

shown that these individuals tend to enjoy the emotionally and sonically complex arrangements

that might be more likely to elicit chills. Nusbaum and Silvia hypothesized that musical taste

would be one of the mediators between openness and chills. Openness has also been

demonstrated to correlate with the amount of interest and engagement people show in creative

stimuli. It was therefore also hypothesized that individuals with greater openness would report

interacting more frequently and meaningfully with musical stimuli, and that this would mediate

the frequency with which they experience chills.

Subjects were 196 students (110 female, 86 male; ages 18-45) at the University of North

Caroline at Greensboro. A series of questionnaires were administered to participants in order to

assess the frequency of their chill experiences, their Big Five personality traits, their musical

preferences, various aspects of their musical interest and engagement, and their familiarity with

well-known aesthetic concepts. Chill frequency was assessed using three items that could be

answered via ratings on a seven-point Likert scale. The question was “While listening to music,

how often do you…” and the three items, “feel chills down your spine”, “get goose bumps”, and

“feel like your hair is standing on end”. Big Five personality traits were assessed using the 60-

item Five Factor Inventory and two brief 10-item scales. Musical preferences were assessed

using Rentfrow and Gosling’s Short Test of Music Preferences (STOMP) questionnaire, a 14-

item questionnaire that has respondents rank their like or dislike of various musical genres on a

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seven-point Likert scale. Six mediators of musical experience and engagement were measured

by asking the subjects to indicate whether or not they played an instrument, how important music

was to them, how many music-related college classes the had taken, how often they attended

concerts, whether or not they owned a portable music player, and how many hours a day they

spent listening to music. The Smith and Smith aesthetic fluency scale was also administered to

ascertain the participants’ overall engagement with and knowledge of the arts by asking general

questions about well-known concepts and figures in art history.

As predicted, openness to experience was a strong predictor of chills, and the only Big

Five trait that demonstrated a significant correlation. In concordance with previous research,

openness to experience was shown to correlate with a preference for a greater number of musical

genres and for more psychologically and sonically complex music. In contrast to the researchers’

predictions, however, statistical analysis demonstrated that no relationship existed between genre

preferences and aesthetic chills. Openness to experience was strongly correlated with all six of

the measures used to determine musical interest, as well as scores on the Smith and Smith

aesthetic fluency scale. As predicted, individuals with a greater openness to experience were

much more likely to engage actively with the arts. Three of the mediators were significant

predictors of musical chills: playing an instrument, rating music as more important, and listening

to music for more hours per day. Nusbaum and Silvia suggest that future studies investigate the

interaction between personality factors and the situational experiences associated with specific

types of music in order to gain an understanding of how these factors might work together to

mediate the experience of musical chills.

!

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5. Summary of Significant Findings in Correlates of Musical Chills

To summarize and conclude this investigation, we will revisit Avram Goldstein’s original

definition of the phenomenon of aesthetic chills (or thrills):

About half of those surveyed experience thrills as so commonplace an accompaniment of strong emotion that they presume them to be universal. Yet, to the others, the phenomenon is entirely unknown, so that its very existence is regarded with skepticism. A typical thrill is described as a slight shudder, chill, or tinging sensation, usually localized at the back of the neck, and fleeting. A more intense thrill lasts longer, and may spread from the point of origin, up over the scalp, forward over the face, downward along the spine, and forward over the chest, abdomen, thighs, and legs. It may be accompanied by visible gooseflesh (piloerection), especially on the arms. Incipient weeping may occur, and sighing, together with a feeling of a ‘lump in the throat’. That thrills, with their obvious involvement of the autonomic nervous system, are a manifestation of emotion has long been recognized in language and literature. To say something is ‘thrilling’ means it stirs the emotions, but a ‘thrill’ is also a physical vibration. (Goldstein, 1980) !

In this description, Goldstein acknowledges one of the most confounding questions in the study

of aesthetic chills: why is the prevalence of chills so varied? Some people do not experience

them at all, while others find themselves with chills multiple times a day. Some pieces of music

evoke chills the whole way through, while others scarcely engage the listener’s psychological

arousal. This paper has presented a great deal of data surrounding three main categories for the

factors that may influence the variability of the experience of musical chills: physiological

correlates, psychoacoustic correlates, and neuropsychological correlates. In the present section, I

attempt to summarize the most significant findings in each of these domains.

Research on the physiological responses that coincide with the sensation of musical chills

reveals that chills correlate with significant changes in the electrical conductance of skin, or the

galvanic skin response (GSR) (Craig, 2005). GSR is a way of measuring activation of the

sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system by assessing the activity of sweat glands on

the surface of the skin. Sweat-induced moisture on the skin’s surface increases conductance and

Herman !25

indicates higher levels of arousal and a more significant emotional and sympathetic response.

This research also revealed that piloerection is often associated with chills, and that it correlates

with the intensity of a chill experience. Interestingly, piloerection—and the accompanying

sensation of coldness reported by many of the participants—is not brought about by any actual

changes in body temperature, and must therefore be a neurological response to or byproduct of

sympathetic nervous system activation. In general, physiological studies of aesthetic chills

provide a quantifiable way of measuring emotional responses to music.

Studies on psychologically evocative musico-acoustic structures have yielded a

considerable breadth of results. The first study described in the psychoacoustical correlates

section of this paper demonstrated that specific musical structures have a tendency to elicit

similar physiological and psychological reactions in listeners. For example, tears were most

reliably elicited by appoggiaturas (described in the study’s explanation) and chills were most

consistently evoked by unexpected harmonies and changes in texture. In attempts to provide a

mechanistic explanation for how these evocations might occur, the authors hypothesized that

certain musical structures may mimic the emotional progression of real-life events in terms of the

way moods and feelings are organized temporally (i.e., a chord progression that changes from

sad to suspenseful to happy might reflect an event that has a similar emotional structure).

Although the researchers had no empirical basis for this hypothesis, it presents an interesting

topic to consider.

The second study on psychoacoustic properties of chill-eliciting music found that SCR

and heart rate were highest over the measures of a song that had been identified as chill-inducing

passages. The most important finding of this study was that five structural similarities could be

Herman !26

observed in all passages that were identified as chill-inducing. All chill passages were from slow

movements of the songs from which they were excerpts; they all contained a contrast and

alternation between a solo instrument and an orchestral part; all involved a sudden or a gradual

crescendo; all included an expansion in register in either the high or the low range (adding an

octave); and they all contained harmonically and melodically peculiar progressions that tended to

evoke a musical sense of tension or tonal ambiguity. The researchers state that these effects are

culture-dependent, as they are based on expectations which are likely the result of an

enculturation to society’s musical norms.

Research on neurological correlates of musical chills revealed that the phenomenon of

chills activates the same reward pathways that are triggered for biological needs such as food and

sex, as well as for euphorigenic drugs of abuse. Increases in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF)

was observed in areas of the brain responsible for the processing of rewarding and reinforcing

stimuli (left ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens), goal-driven behavior (left dorsomedial

midbrain/ventral tegmental area), craving and reward responses (bilateral insula; right

orbitofrontal cortex), reward-based decision-making (anterior cingulate cortex), and motor

control (right thalamus; supplementary motor area; left cerebellum). Decreases in rCBF were

found in regions of the brain involved in fear (right amygdala), inhibition (left hippocampus/

amygdala), and emotion regulation and decision-making (ventral medial prefrontal cortex).

Dopamine and opioid systems underlie these processes, which is consistent with data from

Goldstein’s 1980 study that indicate an attenuation of chill responses after the injection of

naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist. Based on the coordinates of brain activity in this study,

Herman !27

and in concordance with previous findings, the researchers believe that opioid-receptor-rich

efferent projections from the nucleus accumbens are implicated in these neural activities.

Specific personality traits have also been shown to correlate with the likelihood that an

individual experiences aesthetic chills. Having a high ranking on the Big Five measure for

openness to experience has been shown to be a strong predictor for musical chills. Likewise, a

respondent’s indication that they experience musical chills is one of the strongest markers for

high rankings in openness to experience. Studies show that openness correlates strongly with the

breadth of a person’s musical taste and their threshold for the enjoyment of sonically and

emotionally complex pieces, but that musical taste does not systematically relate to the

prevalence of musical chills. High openness is also a strong predictor for engagement and

interest in aesthetic and musical stimuli. High openness rankings correlate with a higher

likelihood that a respondent plays an instrument, owns a portable music player, has taken college

classes in music, attends concerts frequently, ranks music as being important to them, and listens

to music for many hours each day. Of these six behaviors, playing an instrument, listening to

music for more hours per day, and rating music and more important correlate strongly with the

likelihood that an individual experiences musical chills.

6. Future Directions

It is clear that a great variety of factors—many of which were omitted from this paper

due to limitations in length—interact to determine whether or not chills are experienced in

response to the audition of a particular musical passage at a specific point in time. Examples of

these factors include musical structure, personality traits, neurochemical composition,

environmental and contextual factors, personal history and emotional associations, and current

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state of psychological arousal. It is also highly plausible that many of these factors serve as

mediators for each other, enhancing or diminishing the influence that each has on the listener and

on the evocation of musical chills. In a word, the experience of musical chills is a highly

complex phenomenon which, despite the similarities that can be observed, has a great deal of

individual and situational variability. In addition, the interdisciplinary nature of the topic makes

it challenging to study in depth, so the current body of work regarding musical chills is relatively

small. This means, however, that there is much to be discovered.

An important implication of all of the studies discussed in this paper is the notion that the

empirical, objective study of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of musical chills has the

potential to make great strides in the neuroscientific study of emotions. Chills, when seen as

concrete manifestations of strongly experienced emotions, can be directly assessed in order to

analyze information about emotional experiences. This data can then be correlated with other

experimental measures, such as physiological arousal or neuronal activity in specific brain

structures. The novelty of this field of study is exciting and opens many conceptual doors to new

empirical investigations of emotion and music.

Much of listening to music involves building expectations which will either be met or left

unsatisfied (Guhn, 2007). As noted in the studies that investigated psychoacoustical correlates,

the expectations we generate when listening to music are influenced, to a large degree, by the

musical culture in which we have developed. Considering this, it would be interesting to

conduct cross-cultural studies on chill patterns in response to various musical structures in order

to determine how enculturation to different musical norms can affect the physiology of an

individual’s chill response.

Herman !29

Another interesting topic to investigate would relate to the reward pathway. According to

Blood and Zatorre, the circuitry activated during musical chills is the same circuitry that is

activated in response to food-, sex-, and euphorigenic-drug-related stimuli (Blood & Zatorre,

2001). Data from their study also revealed increased blood flow to the bilateral insula—the brain

structure whose activation leads to craving in drug addicts—during the occurrence of musical

chills. If this is the case, could musical chills also create a sense of craving? Theoretically, it

makes sense that they could, if experienced in a high enough “dose”. It would be interesting to

further investigate the neurological underpinnings of craving, addiction, reward, and musical

chills to see if chills have any addiction-related properties. If so, perhaps it is possible that

people “crave” the experience of chills when listening to music, or that they return to a song

again and again to experience that “rush” once more.

Another study that could yield intriguing results, with possible clinical application, would

involve assessing the implications of the physiological and psychological changes associated

with musical chills. If it is determined that musical chills bring about some cognitive,

physiological, or emotional benefits, it might be possible to develop musical compositions that

are specifically structured to cater to individuals seeking these benefits. This would have the

potential to expand the field of music therapy research. In addition, studies on a broader range of

personality traits, physiological correlates, emotional state factors, and on how these variables

might interact with and moderate each other would be very useful for the field.

Empirical study of the phenomenon of musical chills has the potential to wed research in

a variety of disciplines and to capture the interest of a large assortment of individuals with a wide

range of interests. This research could draw from and have implications for neurophysiology,

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musicology, cognitive neuroscience, and personality, aesthetic, developmental, social, and

clinical psychology. Findings of this species of research would be relatable and applicable,

likely appealing to anyone with a significant interest in music and psychology. In addition, using

physiological and objective measures of musical chills to analyze strong emotional experiences

opens the door to empirical research on human emotion, one of the most scientifically abstruse

aspects of the human mind. The science of musical chills is an emerging area of interdisciplinary

research and suggests a promising future, in which many fields of study coalesce to work

empirically towards a common, and conceptually multifaceted, cause.

!!!

Herman !31

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