25 Facts about the Science of Music - mental_floss List Show Ep. 340 | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss Video. And did you know that

Wannabe by the Spice Girls is the catchiest song of all time? I guess I should give you

some context for that fact, although it's clearly true. In 2014, a group of researchers released an online game called Hooked on Music. It had

a thousand clips from pop hits going all the way back to the 1940s and it asked players

to identify songs as fast as possible. They found that Wannabe by the Spice Girls was

the catchiest song because people were able to recognize it in about 2.3 seconds. Way

below the average of 5 seconds. Second place, Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega. Great, now that's

going to be in my head all day. And third place was Eye of the Tiger. Nope, Mambo No

5 is gone. It's Eye of the Tiger all day long. Anyway, that's the first of many facts about

music I am going to share with you today in this video brought to you by our friends at Geico

A 2014 study found that while people listened to music they described as chill-inducing

they were more generous. Like, the 22 participants played a game in which they were dictators

who had to decide how to distribute money to fake people. And ones who listened to their

preferred chill-inducing music beforehand were more generous than those who listened to music they didn't like or those who heard nothing at all

That might have you wondering what causes the chills while you're listening to music

The 2011 study found that adults who are open to new experiences are most likely to get chills

while listening to music, and they tended to be the same people who listened to more

music and valued it. Music has been shown to trigger the nucleus accumbens in the brain, and that structure

is also associated with dopamine, the chemical the brain releases during eating and sex

So some experts compare music's effects to, you know, sex. I suppose it depends on the music, though

I actually became pregnant briefly after listening to Missy Elliott's most recent single

There was another study that used an fMRI machine to examine the activity of the nucleus

accumbens while people listened to music. Researchers played 60 clips of novel songs

to participants and then they asked how much money the participants would pay for the song

The more activity the music created in the nucleus accumbens, the more people were willing

to spend. In short, soon enough record labels will have little chips in our brains that

charge based on how much they say we enjoyed the music In the 1990s a scientist named Sheila Woodward of the University of Cape Town set out to determine whether a fetus can hear music so she placed a two underwater microphone into the wombs of women in labor As if labor doesn suck enough already Anyway

Woodward discovered that music is detectable in the womb. She also found that the heart

rate of fetuses becomes elevated while music is playing, so they can very likely hear it

and even react to it. Side note, everyone told us to play like Beethoven up against

my wife's belly while we were pregnant with our children. I guess technically we weren't

pregnant. That's a bit of a funny phrasing, isn't it? It's really an ownership over

a thing that you are not. That was a side note to the side note. But anyway, we mostly

played Beyonce, and sure enough, now our kids are awesome. Music is important to infants

as well, which is why we continue to play our kids Beyonce. In 2013, researchers studied

the effects of music on 272 premature infants in a neonatal intensive care unit. And they

And they found that playing lullabies to the babies resulted in multiple positive behaviors, including lower heart rates and higher caloric intake

And listening to music has also been shown to improve the immune systems of adults

A team from McGill University examined 400 research papers about music in the brain in 2013, and they found that music decreases anxiety and assists immune system function

And then there's a 2008 study from Harriet Watt University that had the surprising conclusion that classical music fans and heavy metal fans are very similar, at least psychologically

The researchers surveyed 36,000 music fans from six different countries and found that listeners of these two genres tended to be creative, gentle, and self-assured

Except when in the mosh pit. Now, a lot of people wonder why teenagers tend to listen to their music so loudly

They are also the same people who scream, get off my lawn and cut in line at the airport

and insist that they shouldn't have to take off their shoes. In short, they're me

Anyway, it turns out that low frequency sounds above 90 decibels stimulate the sacculus in

the inner ear and that has actually been connected to the parts of the brain associated with pleasure

So it's possible that listening to loud music can actually increase the positive components

of music. But it's definite that it can increase deafness. Just ask me, but don't ask me when you're sitting to my left, because I can't hear you

Music in dreams is considered quite rare. According to one study from MIT, about 40% of musicians' dreams contain musical content

but in non-musicians, that number drops down to about 18%. Some studies have discovered a link between drumming and intelligence

Are you sure Meredith That seems very unlikely to me Have you ever met a drummer Apparently one study even found that men who scored higher on a 60 intelligence test were better at keeping a steady beat on the drums than people who scored lower on the test

My brother is a drummer. This is very disconcerting news to me. There was a French study published in the journal Learning and Individual Differences

which found that students did better on a quiz after a one-hour lecture with classical music in the background

than students who learned the same material without the classical music playing

And then there's tearjerker songs. One 2014 study surveyed a group of people in order to determine why we enjoy sad music

I think it's because sad songs, they say so much. He said, realizing that no one would get his Elton John references

The study pinned down four different rewards of music evoked sadness. Reward of imagination, emotional regulation, empathy, and no real life implications

Mark, I wonder if those rewards apply to other sad forms of entertainment. I'm just asking for a friend, of course

Well, and because I love the movie Steel Magnolias. Just whenever I need a good cry, which on average is once every three days, I'll watch Steel Magnolias

Anyway, speaking of moods, listening to happy or sad music changes how we interpret facial expressions

One study had participants listen to happy or sad music and then rate faces with happy, sad, or neutral expressions

And the music actually changed participants. Like, neutral faces were rated as happier by people who had listened to happy music, and the opposite was true with people who'd listened to sad music

People obviously have varied taste in music, but our brains seem to act similarly when it comes to individual pieces

Like one study had participants listen to real but obscure symphonic music and pseudo music while in an fMRI machine

and their brains had very similar synchronization and patterns while real music played

Single Straight Men of Floss video fans here is a fact for you. According to one piece of research, single straight men and women report increased sexual attraction for the opposite sex

if music is playing in the background when they first meet. But what kind of music? I mean, presumably it's Nicki Minaj, but we won't know for sure

until we invest the necessary resources to study it. I've already coined a term for it, the Minaj Effect. We just need the research to back up the term

Anyway, in 2012, a group of scientists at the Spanish National Research Council published their research

on pop songs between the years 1955 and 2010. They discovered that pop songs from recent years utilized fewer chords, tones, and pitch transitions

than songs from the past but I still prefer Bieber new album to ABBA There actually a field of study in which musicians and computer scientists are trying to figure out how to create pop music based entirely on algorithms It known as pop music automation

Speaking of songwriting, one scientist set out to find a formula for tear-jerking songs

He discovered a few features that tend to work, including an expansion of the frequencies

played, unexpected deviations in the melody or the harmony, and the abrupt entrance of

a new voice. That scientist's name? Bon Iver. In fact, it was not

A prime example of a song containing all of those attributes is Someone Like You by Adele

No surprises there. It's a tearjerker. Of course, music often triggers memories in people, and it turns out it can do the same

thing in people who have impaired memories. In one 2013 study, a handful of people who had brain injuries scored higher on a test

of autobiographical memories while listening to a playlist containing number one hit songs

from 1960 through 2010. There's a certain type of music we associate with horror films, right

Like in addition to minor chords, you might remember the use of high-pitched sounds in movies like Jaws and The Shining

Well, it turns out these sound a lot like the screeches of baby animals

Experts think the reason the music is making us feel uneasy is because we are biologically programmed to feel endangered when we hear those sounds

In 1911, researcher Leonard Ayers had cyclists pedal to silence and then to a live band playing music

and unsurprisingly, he found that they pedaled faster while the band played

And jumping forward 100 years, a 2012 study found that while cyclists peddled in time to music, they needed 7% less oxygen than cyclists who peddled to silence

And finally, I return here to my salon to tell you about how music might affect the stock market

Researchers have examined the beat variants of the songs in the US Billboard Top 100 charts in a given year and compared that data with the S&P 500 for the same year

And from 1958 through 2007, they found that people prefer to listen to simpler songs just

before the market gets volatile. This might be because they're thinking about difficult future decisions, so they like songs

with less beat variants, or it might be that major record labels control the stock market

Thanks for watching this episode of Metal Floss Video, which was brought to you by Geico and made with the help of all of these wonderful people

Leave your favorite song in the comments. I'm fascinated to know that mine, of course, is Mambo Number Five

And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome