SMU and UCLA Study - Explained

 On my last post, I briefly summarized the science behind the SMU and UCLA study.  Zachary Wallmark, assistant professor and director of the MuSci Lab at SMU, explained that the study found that people with higher empathy differ from others in the way their brains process music. Journalist Justin Martin explained the research process as follows: "A new study from Southern Methodist University shows that empathetic people — those who are generally more sensitive to the feelings of others — receive more pleasure from listening to music, and their brains show increased activity in areas associated with social interactions. 

Researchers interviewed participants about their taste in music — songs they loved and others they hated. Then, participants were put into an MRI scanner and played different selections, including unfamiliar tunes, and researchers studied how their brain reacted to them.

All participants experienced positive activity in the brain when listening to music they loved, says Zachary Wallmark, an assistant professor of musicology at SMU, who led the study. This activity increased for empathetic people.

When played unfamiliar music they didn’t like, empathetic participants still showed activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain, an area associated with executive control and regulation of emotional reactions, Wallmark says."

It is now scientifically proven that higher empathy people experience music on a more euphoric level compared to those of lower empathy.  The way these empaths process music is compared to how they feel when they have a social encounter- it affects the same areas of the brain.