Originally Published May 2013

There’s little doubt that music improves the quality of advertising, or any visual presentation for that matter. But we rarely give much thought to the physiological factors that create music’s impact.

I should disclose up front that I am not a professional music theorist. My knowledge on the subject comes through the teachings of others and from some professional application. Although I’m an experienced drummer and visual artist, I can claim no original discovery in the field of music theory.

Understanding the Power of Music

The philosopher Plato, writing in his epic work The Republic, recognized that music had the ability to enter most powerfully into the innermost part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it. He not only knew music’s power; he was somewhat wary of it. Plato, like many of the ancient philosophers of his day, was in love with rational thought and had no patience for any other type of thinking. In fact it is their prejudice handed down over hundreds of years that has led us to look down on irrational thoughts and actions. However Plato also knew that emotions could be powerful motivators of human behavior. And music seemed particularly able to evoke these emotions. But he had no idea why.

Most often when we ask anyone in the advertising business to quantify the positive effects of music, they turn first to a series of statistics showing the preference audiences have for ads and presentations that include a soundtrack. But what drives that preference? Would any music do? What’s the difference between music and noise? If music is universal, why don’t we all like the same kinds of music? Lots of questions. And, surprisingly, there are some answers.

Music is a complex structure of many components. Two of the most important, particularly from a physiological perspective, are rhythm and melody. Rhythm is the pulse and pattern that form the clock speed of music while melody contains the pitch profile, what we might refer to as the tune. Rhythms exist throughout nature and originate in our own bodies as heart rates and breathing rates.

Melody has roots in the natural world as well. Much like the Golden Mean and other mathematical ratios that provide a foundation for what we consider to be visual art, fixed ratios of pitch—believed to have first been identified by the philosopher Pythagoras—are perceived by the ear in a similar fashion and form the basis of how we distinguish music from noise.

Melodies are thought to mimic the pitch and frequency profiles of human emotions. Dirges and requiems have been said to imitate the wails and moans of sinners and mourners while the more upbeat works of happier composers reflect the quick, staccato exhalations of laughter. Other researchers have suggested that the similar pitches of sustained high notes on the violin and infants’ shrieks are what makes horror movie music so effective.

But to fully understand just how these aspects of music can affect the listener’s brain, it is helpful to review a little about the way incoming information is processed.

How the Brain Listens

The brain receives input from a variety of different channels—visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc.—and this information is transduced into data streams that are coming in at varying data rates. This input goes through a bundle of neurons called the reticular activating system or RSA, which filters out very high data rate information (the 26 TVs and 18 conversations around you in a restaurant) and the very low data rate information (the clouds and sun moving across the sky).

The filtered sensory input then goes through the limbic system which consists of several different structures along a pathway known as the Papez circuit. The limbic system is an older part of the brain that was once thought to be the very center of emotion, and its structures have demonstrated the ability to store information that is emotionally important such as threats to our existence (negative emotions like fear) or experiences that make us exceedingly happy. These limbic structures compare incoming information to the stored copies and, if they find a match, they trigger a hypothalamic response through the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems that we perceive as a physiological change. In other words, we feel an emotional response.

All of this happens before any information is sent to the conscious neocortex. For instance, if you are in the woods and you notice something wiggle at your feet, your heart rate increases, your diaphragm contracts sharply, and you jump back with a sudden gasp before realizing it was just a piece of rope you had stepped on. The limbic system, based on visual information that matched that of a snake stored in memory, produced an autonomic response before the cortex had an opportunity to analyze what had actually happened.

Another relevant physiological function is entrainment, which is the body’s way of adapting to a new condition or environment. It can do this in a number of ways—physically, biochemically, etc.—and it’s the process the body uses for learning habits and assimilating new patterns. Imagine a band begins to play and the audience begins clapping along. A spattering of hand-smacks quickly condenses into a roomful of people clapping in unison. That’s entrainment.

Music’s Assault on the Brain—and the Body

We perceive music in a number of ways, not just through our auditory senses. The pace and pulse of the music’s rhythm produce waves of energy in the air that impact various receptor cells in many parts of the body, particularly in the skin and subcutaneous tissues. The pitch profile of the music’s melody is likewise felt in addition to being heard. All of this information across a range of senses is delivered to the RSA, through the limbic system and on to the neocortex.

At this point the music’s rhythm and melody have been perceived through a variety of senses and have begun to trigger emotional matches in the limbic system as well as conscious associations in the neocortex. The listener is feeling the effects of the positive emotional responses at the same time she is consciously remembering the band, the tune, or the happiness she may have felt the first time she heard the song.

If she makes a positive association with the music in her neocortex, her body begins to entrain itself to the rhythm and melody. She now begins to assimilate the emotional expression contained within that music.

If all this is happening during a commercial, the music has opened a series of neural pathways leading to the most trusting part of her brain just in time for the sponsor’s logo or tag line to be seen, heard and associated with the positive emotions.

The result is a positive emotional experience—part conscious and part subconscious—that will be associated with the visual presentation the music accompanies. And emotion has been shown to have a strong influence on behavior, much stronger than cognitive factors.

This is great news for advertisers, and it underscores the value music can bring to a visual presentation. Music has the ability to engage multiple sensory systems, penetrate deeply into the body, activate the emotions through the limbic system, and produce physiological effects that influence behavior.

Plato, it seems, was right all along.

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For Reference and Further Reading:

The Emotional Brain. LeDoux, Joseph. (1996). New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

The Music Effect: Music Physiology and Clinical Applications. Schneck, Daniel J. and Berger, Dorita S. (2006). London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.