Our Musical Brain

Words by: Gracie June Richards Page Design by: Eva Castanedo

Have you ever wondered why a certain song invokes you to cry or feel a certain way? Do you have playlists dedicated to certain feelings or emotions? I know I do: I have 92 playlists on Spotify that I have spent hours carefully curating to satisfy every mood, every occasion, and every walk to uni!

Neuroscientists have found that music stimulates our memory and emotions; it also can invoke a biological and physiological responses. Biological responses to music affect us internally, such as a change in blood pressure, heart rate and hormones. Externally, it can give us chills, goosebumps or make us cry.

This explains many of the all- so-common feelings we have when our favourite or least favourite songs come on. Scientifically, emotions are chemicals that are released in response to the way we interpret a certain trigger. One example of this is when we listen to a song we love, our brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that is responsible for allowing us to feel pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation. It also has a role in controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, and body movements.

It’s easy not to put a lot of thought into the songs we listen to but in reality, the components of these songs are mathematical and structural: because of this, our brains have to do a lot of work to make sense of them. Through using Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), neuroscientists have been able to find out which parts of the brain light up when listening to music. Research has found that the brain doesn’t have a specific place it uses to analyse music, instead different parts of the brain handle different aspects of music:

- The Auditory cortex of the brain is located in the temporal lobe. This bit of the brain recognises pitch and tone, and also analyses a song’s melody and harmony.

- The Motor Complex and cerebellum located on the right side of the brain are responsible for figuring out a song’s rhythm.

Other parts of the brain like the prefrontal cortex analyse how songs change. For example, in his TED talk, Alan Harvey showed the audience using an EEG how the brain processes sound waves. He played a song a man knew, resulting in alpha waves showing up on the scanner meaning that he liked the song and it was peaceful to him. He then had the same song played with the wrong notes unexpectedly played. This time the brain waves were bigger and more erratic. In an MRI scan this would have showed up as the prefrontal cortex.

How about when music makes you cry, and why it feels so good to cry to it? Maybe you are one of those people who puts on a sad playlist when they’re sad: if so, you’re not alone.

A study of more than 700 people by researchers in Berlin in 2014 found that there are four rewards that come with experiencing sadness due to music. These rewards are emotion regulation, reward of imagination, empathy, and lack of ‘real-life’ implications. The study also found that feelings of nostalgia are created when listening to sad music, a longing for the past despite the associated sadness. The hormone prolactin is also released when we listen to sad music. Prolactin is meant to calm us when we are under stress or crying, but if you aren’t crying for any real-life, traumatic reasons, this hormone release creates a feeling of bliss.

The experience of music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is celebrated in every culture uniquely but the same all at once. The brain has been described as “the sound system between our ears” explaining why people’s lives are narrated or scored by the music that they listen to. After researching this I don’t really know if I’ll be able to listen to music without thinking about my brain lighting up or processing the song I’m listening to, but it’s pretty cool to think about. Happy listening!

Comedy literature is a genre that’s absolutely everywhere - even if you’ve never sat down to watch an Oscar Wilde play or have picked up a copy of your favourite comedian’s novel, you will undoubtedly have at least been subjected to a nonsense poem as a child or heard a reference to or quote from one of Shakespeare’s comedies. For example, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ is perhaps one of his most famous lines, and comes from the comedy play

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Despite its established place in the literary sphere, many critics are quick to judge comedy literature as trivial, superficial, and generally not worth the read. Good writing has long been synonymous with seriousness, and comedy writing is, by nature, the opposite of serious. Despite this, I strongly believe that there’s a place for this genre in the realm of worthwhile reads, both in the fact that they so often reveal much about their contemporary societies, and insofar as comedy literature is an excellent way to take a break from the seriousness of life whilst still being able to enjoy a good book.

Simply speaking, the purpose of comedy writing is to amuse an audience. The Oxford English Dictionary defines comedy as `professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches’ - but whilst today we think of the genre as being very light-hearted and silly, comedy actually has some pretty intellectual and serious roots. The term ‘comedy’ has etymological links to Ancient Greece - their word ‘komos’ meant revelry or merry-making. In Athenian democracy, it was common for the public to be subjected to comedy poets who hoped to influence their vote. Since then, novelists, poets and playwrights alike have turned to comedy to write some of their best and well-loved works.

A regular feature of historical comedy literature is that it quite often tackles surprisingly large issues. Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, for example, can be read as much as a social commentary of the 1890s British upperclass in society as it can be enjoyed simply as a farcical drawing-room comedy about mistaken identities and overlyexaggerated misunderstandings. In brief, the play follows protagonist Jack Worthing as he navigates his way through the great and good of London society, which he finds incredibly dull. In this light he creates a fictional brother for himself named Earnest, who lives in the country and whom he ‘visits’ regularly in order to escape his city life. Without giving any plot spoilers away, I will say that the play quickly descends into a hilarious mishmash of lying, double-bluffing, farcical plotlines and witty dialogue. On the surface, Wilde’s play can be and is often simply enjoyed as light entertainment - this being the spirit in which it was received by much of the audience at the time. If we delve deeper it becomes clear that this chaos and ridiculousness that surrounds the upper-class London society in the play is about more than entertainment, and can be read as a comment on the ludicrous, incredulous attitudes of this social group. In this way comedy literature can be used to quite serious means, and perhaps deserves more recognition as a genre than it is often awarded.

Another way in which the comedy genre has been utilised is as a tool to introduce or bring the general public around to the acceptance of concepts that have been seen as outlandish and preposterous. As these are aspects that tend to define the genre anyway, comedy literature seems like the perfect way to do this. Comedian Mae Martin, for example, released their debut book in 2019. Can Everyone Please Calm Down? is a very funny and insightful piece of literature, but the book covers so much more than that. Martin uses their platform to delve into the twists and turns of 21st century sexuality, covering every topic imaginable from sex, pronouns, sexuality and the (un)importance of labelling yourself. The witty language and frequent jokes made throughout the book turn what could very easily become a baffling and impenetrable subject into a light-hearted and entertaining way to explore the topic of contemporary sexuality. Martin opens up the discussion around the topic to whoever is willing to pick up their book and read it, thereby making one of the most salient topics of our generation accessible and fun to learn about.

This idea of exploring contemporary issues is not a new one, though. We can look back as far as the 16th century to find what we might think of as modern issues of gender identity being discussed in comedy writing. William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night is a piece of literature that manages to be both revered in the literary canon and also comedic and fun. This is a play about mistaken identities and cross-dressing, about gender fluidity and how none of these issues are really worth arguing about anyway. The play’s protagonist Viola is time and again confused for her brother Sebastian, and ends up using this to her advantage by dressing as him. Shakespeare’s work is an excellent example of why and how we could be embracing the comedy genre as a worthwhile and academically worthy way of exploring social issues, whilst having fun with it at the same time.

Given the current social climate, I absolutely believe that there is a place for comedy writing as a literary staple in everyone’s lives - it feels like we all need a bit of a pick-me-up at the moment. Whilst I can understand that perhaps the genre often does not hold as much weight thematically on the surface, and could therefore arguably be less worthy of literary analysis, I think there is often so much to be gained from studying these texts more thoroughly. After all, why shouldn’t society be challenged about its views every once in a while? And even if the only benefit somebody takes away from reading a comedic novel or watching a funny play is that they’ve laughed, I would still consider the genre to be a success.

Words by: Bryony Wright Design by: Molly Openshaw