Curiosity or pleasure, what awakens before when we listen to a song?

You hear a new song, you like it, it interests you, you want to listen to it again, it makes you feel good. But what happens before? Has the curiosity that the song aroused in you made you like it? Or how did you like the song, have you been curious about it?

This is the unknown that the Cognition and Brain Plasticity research group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) in Hospitalet de Llobregat and the University of Barcelona (UB) wanted to solve through a large live experiment with the symphony orchestra from Milan. Using the thousand people from the public as study participants, the experiment was part of the scientific dissemination days in Milan that mix music and science.

“We wanted the experience to be in a normal environment, in a concert hall, where the participants would listen to live music from a large orchestra, and not small fragments of recorded songs as in the laboratory”, indicates Dr. Antoni Rodríguez Fornells, head of the IDIBELL and UB research group.

Of the thousand attendees at the concert, 727 decided to participate in the experiment that the group of scientists proposed. Doing so was very easy, while the orchestra played “Fratres” by Arvo Pärt, a little-known composition so that the audience could feel curious, all they had to do was indicate the degree of curiosity or pleasure they were feeling at each moment.

Through a mobile application, half of the audience evaluated the pleasure they felt and the other half evaluated their curiosity. They were measured in real time, through a graduated bar (like a thermometer), which showed their interest and pleasure in her at all times, as they felt. The results showed that there was indeed a temporal correlation between curiosity and pleasure. First, a song arouses curiosity in us, and it is this interest that makes us feel pleasure after a few seconds.

A moment from the concert. (Image: Milan Symphony Orchestra)

After the musical piece, the conductor of the orchestra, Ruben Jais, and the neuroscientist who promoted the experiment, Laura Ferreri, from the University of Pavia, gave an informative talk on neuroscience and music. During the talk they took the opportunity to explain the different elements that made up the piece that had just been performed and the reason for each of them.

To end the day, the orchestra performed the piece by Arvo Pärt again, and the attendees were asked to re-evaluate their pleasure and curiosity. This second time, the curiosity for the song remained, however, the pleasure felt when listening to it increased. «Knowing the structure of the song and the reason for it, makes you appreciate it more and you end up liking it more. If you know more about the subject, you will be able to enjoy it more”, says Gemma Cardona, a researcher at IDIBELL and the UB.

To the surprise of all attendees, the researchers presented the preliminary results obtained during the first performance of the piece, which was highly appreciated by the audience. Dr. Xim Cerdá, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and IDIBELL, assures that “it has been a great experience that we would like to repeat in Catalonia. He now has to analyze the results in depth to learn more about the natural evolution of curiosity and the pleasure that songs make us feel. (Source: IDIBELL)