Stage Dive into Synapses: The Neuroscience of Music & Mirror Neurons
By Kevin Burke
There is something to be said for live music. Something to be said for the fried
vocal cords the morning after losing your voice in the chorus of a crowd singing
along. Something to be said for a fist in the air no longer being just yours, but another
appendage of the swirling and crashing mosh pit. There is something sacred in the quiet
afterwards when the cool night air outside hits sweat soaked bodies as they leave the
venue, or stadium, or basement and the ringing that remains reminds our ears of the joy
we weathered. I know in my bones that music is more than entertainment. In fact, I
would argue that we all know in our neurobiology that music is more than just
background noise at your local coffee shop. As a therapist who is deeply informed by
both art and neuroscience, I have often wondered what exactly is going on when we
feel ourselves move with a whole room. Diving into research on neuroscience and
music, I have found some clues to this lie in what we have come to call our “mirror
neurons”.
Roughly speaking, our mirror neurons play a large role in how we learn. Mirror
neurons are activated when you both perform an action and when you observe
someone else performing that same action. In other words, the same part of your brain
that is firing when you are diving off of a stage at a show is also firing when you see
someone else stage diving. Mirror neurons act as a neural mirror that allow you to
understand the actions, motor functions, intentions, and emotions of others—they are
internal simulators, forming the basis for imitation, social learning, and, some argue,
empathy. Given mirror neurons definitive connection to how we learn motor actions, it
should come as no surprise that the way we learn language and speech (a deeply
involved motor action) hinges on our mirror neurons. What’s more, research has found
that our nervous systems process music the same way that we process language. I’ll do
my best to trace the travels of music through our brains without getting too lost in the
weeds of technical language.
When we hear music, it first enters our nervous system as an auditory signal and
is primarily processed in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) which handles the basic
auditory features of the musical signal. The signal is then directed to the posterior
inferior frontal gyrus and includes Broca’s Area which is associated with speech or
language. Additionally, the signal also passes through the adjacent premotor cortex. All
of these components of our brains are components of the mirror neuron system (MNS).
Here, the brain analyzes the “motion” information and the hierarchical structure of the
music. It interprets the sound as a series of intentional motor acts, essentially simulating
the actions required to produce the music in the listener’s own motor system. In other
words, when we see the singer singing, part of our brain is singing along. When air
moves through the brass bell of a horn section, our own brains imagine our lungs
belting out that blast. Continuing on the music’s journey through our nervous system,
the music makes its way across the anterior insula which acts as a neural conduit to
send the signal from our motor-based structural analysis of the MNS to the brain’s limbic
system—the primary brain network responsible for, among other things, processing
emotions. This allows the brain to evaluate the musical information in relation to the
listener's own autonomic and emotional state.
In short, not only does music move through our MNS simulating the creation of
music within us as we hear and or see it being created, it then bypasses the logic and
intellect centers of our brain and hits us right in our emotional core. This phenomenon
occurs through our headphones, but appears to be amplified by experiencing the music
in person and in community. Regardless of the venue, from stadium spectacle to a
squat house sparring session, the nervous systems of everyone in that crowd, to a
shocking degree, are in-synch with the artists on the stage and with one another in the
audience. Add in what researchers call the “chameleon effect” in which humans mimic
each other for cohesion and connection especially when in groups, it’s no wonder the
communal experience of live music can evoke the visceral feeling of being part of
something larger than ourselves. It should come as no surprise why so many of us who
find home in music sub-culture describe live shows in terms of a religious experience.
In an era where everything feels increasingly isolated—third spaces diminishing,
all of us working more than we socialize in our increasingly divided country, and even
music itself is cut off from its live and contextual component via streaming—there is
something to be said for live music. There is something to be said for feeling with a
whole crowd, for empathy, for the healing power of connection. Though research has
only truly scratched the surface of what we know about our nervous systems, and
though we are constantly restricted by the buckling limits of language to describe
emotional experiences, what I feel can be said is music is more than entertainment or a
product to be sold—it is deeply human, deeply connective, and deeply needed now
more than ever.
References
Hou, J., Rajmohan, R., Fang, D., Kashfi, K., Al-Khalil, K., Yang, J., ... & O'Boyle,
M. W. (2017). Mirror neuron activation of musicians and non-
musicians in response to motion captured piano
performances. Brain and cognition, 115, 47-55.
Molnar-Szakacs, I., & Overy, K. (2006). Music and mirror neurons: from motion
to’e’motion. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 1(3), 235-
241.
Sadeghi, S., Schmidt, S. N., Mier, D., & Hass, J. (2022). Effective connectivity of
the human mirror neuron system during social cognition. Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 17(8), 732-743.
While writing this Kevin was listening to the album Sunbather by Deaf Heaven as well
as “Nails Radio”.
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