Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music

Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music(journals.plos.org)

76 points by coloneltcb 84 days ago | 32 comments

fcatalan 83 days ago |

I get chills from music here and there. The piece that most reliably will produce the strongest effect on me is "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Looking at the article there seems to be a genetic component, but no one in my family has ever mentioned them, I should go ask.

We are not a "musical" family. No one plays competently any instruments or goes to concerts. I have an ukulele that I use mostly as a noisy version of a fidget spinner.

From the article I see that the openmindedness trait fits, at least musically: I sometimes go on YouTube musical late night binges and they can easily range from Renaissance guitar pieces to KPop via Mozart, Slipknot or some obscure Latvian folklore.

arethuza 83 days ago | |

Here is a wonderful recording of "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" played in Gloucester Cathedral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY&list=RDihx5LCF1y...

fcatalan 83 days ago | | |

I non-ironically got them chills just by hearing a few bars while checking your link.

I tend to go for this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIhZbvlCjY0 because although I can´t read music I can kind of vibe-read the score by looking at the waves of notes following the music. For me it adds to the experience.

Also the almost organ-like effects of the two separate orchestras seem stronger in this recording than in any other I've tried.

nephihaha 83 days ago | | |

You should listen to Classic FM. You can switch it on at random and this tune is often playing. If it isn't, then it's usually Saint Saens' Organ Symphony finale (as featured in "Babe".) :)

readthenotes1 82 days ago | | |

It makes me dream of traveling between planets using wormholes for some reason

namblooc 82 days ago | |

I'm going to chime in with some more examples of (for me) chills inducing classical music pieces:

- Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor (very dark)

- Rossinis Barber of Seville Overture

- Mozarts "The Magic Flute" Overture (helps if you know the opera)

- Mozarts Symphony No. 39 in E, as soon as the allegro starts

- Schuberts Symphony No. 8 "Unfinished", the whole thing makes me want to burst with excitement

levysoft 82 days ago | |

Thank you for sharing the track: I got chills within the first few seconds... could it be a matter of the high-harmonic frequencies of the strings, and the crescendo combined with the spacious reverb of the place where the music is performed?

krzat 83 days ago |

Frequent music chills were an unexpected side effect of my meditation practice. It matches with their "openness to experience" conclusion.

I also found out that you can encourage chills with meditative techniques:

1. Play your song, for example Sogno di Volare.

2. Close your eyes.

3. Think about awesome things: how cool it is that humans invented airplanes and rockets and satelites.

tummler 83 days ago | |

Scientific studies grasping for explanations to spiritual things always give me a smile. This is the way. It’s about opening up to the energetic experience being conveyed through the medium (art, music, whatever). Has nothing to do with individual variations in biology or physiology.

LatencyKills 83 days ago | | |

> scientific studies grasping for explanations to spiritual things always give me a smile.

There are no "spiritual" things. Everything we experience is based upon biology and chemistry. Where do you think the "chills" come from if not synaptic firing?

fcatalan 83 days ago | |

I didn't know Sogno di Volare. It does work very well, quite intense.

I got me thinking... I've never taken any mind altering drugs, so I wonder how the experience compares. I guess that even if not in the same league, being "free" and without apparent side effects this is quite the "feelgood" bang for the buck.

xnx 83 days ago |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson

pfisherman 83 days ago |

Looks like the statistical geneticists have jumped the shark with this one. This big problem here is that their endpoint (chills) is poorly defined, reported by subjects (and thus highly subjective), and not measured using any type of validated instrument. So I question whether they might be fitting a model to noise here.

In the land of drug development patient reported outcomes, even when captured with meticulously designed instruments in prospectively designed clinical trails, are notorious for being noisy and confounded by the placebo effect.

dekhn 82 days ago | |

I had a similar experience in my genetics class in grad school- the professor explained that children of musicians were more likely to have perfect pitch, hence it was a genetic trait. Some folks suggested that perhaps it was possible that children of musicians were subjected to lots of labelled and unlabelled training data (musical notes) making it "environment" rather than genetic.

sidewndr46 83 days ago | |

I pretty much figure from the title it's self reported and yep: "We gather self-reports from a genotyped sample of thousands of partly related individuals from the Netherland".

And the author summary goes on to state: "Many people experience chills when listening to music, reading poetry, or viewing art. Yet not everyone feels these reactions in the same way.". So the subjects aren't even self reporting the same thing.

bonsai_spool 82 days ago | |

> In the land of drug development [...]

Fine, but this is the land of genome-wide association studies. I am unaware of any overlap, considering that such 'GWAS' studies require tens or hundreds of thousands of participants to get any definitive signal... Such work is the nature of statistical genetics.

> So I question whether they might be fitting a model to noise here.

On what basis?

rspoerri 83 days ago |

i'd like to see the list of media they used to create the chills :-)

nullIsAnObject 82 days ago | |

Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor consistently does it for me (https://youtu.be/8V41D0Uczf0). I stopped and stared the first time I heard it (thanks Wednesday Addams!), and learning that it is a reflection on the humanity-altering changes of WW1 makes it more emotional than just another ASMR tingle (which I also sometimes get, as does my daughter).

JKCalhoun 82 days ago | |

You'll have to content yourself with those listed in HN comments.

For the nerds, I'll add the scene from the movie Excalibur when Percival, near the end, throws the Excalibur to the lady of the Lake—with the score playing loudly…

dekhn 82 days ago | | |

Yes, for me it's the scene with the knights riding through the forest with Carmina Burana playing (this was one of my introductions to recorded music- my parents had that record and I spent a lot of time listening to it later).

I think some people call this effect "frisson" and to me it's not dissimilar from the senstation I get from ASMR.

fcatalan 82 days ago | | |

The charge of the Rohirrim in Return of the King also works for me