MarTaze Gaines

Abnormal Psychology Article Review

March 9th, 2017

Why People Become Attached to Music?

There is an article entitled, Neuroscience has identified why some works of art become

universal phenomenon by Susan Roger. In this article, Rogers tries to explain why Hamilton,

the musical, has become such a huge novelty in society. Rogers puts forth that humans are so

interested in the artistic work because it provides familiarity through the genre of music, while

also captivating audiences with a story thats not so familiar to all. This story is of Alexander

Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States. Though this story should be more

well known, it is often one people usually learn while in elementary school and then forget.

Rogers puts forth that our familiarity with the music of our culture allow us to grasp to

things that incorporate that music quickly. Though many people are never musically trained

formally, our culture teaches us many things. The TV shows we watch, the radio commercials,

and other media outlets all teach us foundations of music. This informal training allows us to

anticipate what comes next in a song or even how a sing will end, even if we have never heard

the song before. Our brain is also stimulated when there is something in music that is not

familiar, like dissonance. Dissonance provides unresolved feelings or even feelings of tension.

Hamilton, the musical, allows for these things. It has the familiarity of rap, along with some

unfamiliar musical elements, all while using a story that many people dont know. This is a

recipe for success.

 Rogers mentions a few different peer-reviewed articles. The first she mentions is,

Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic

brain regions by Anne J. Blood, Robert J. Zatorre, Patrick Bermudez and Alan C. Evans. The

researches were interested in looking at the effects of musical dissonance on the brain using

position emission tomography (PET). The study used ten volunteers. Each volunteer was

scanned while listening to six versions of a musical passage with varying degrees of dissonance.

The study shows that participants more familiar with the Western Tonal System respond quicker

to increasing dissonance. This supports the claim that people internalize the tonal rules of our

individual cultures and react when those are violated.

There are many overlaps between the articles. However, there are differences being that

one is for scientific research while the other serves to answer questions in pop culture. The

scientific article explains that increasing consonance and dissonance both elicit changes in the

paralimbic and neocortical areas, not just dissonance. Though consonance and dissonance did

activate separate structures in those areas. From this, the researchers were able to support further

claims of consonance and dissonance being related to different emotions.

Rogers also used other articles to support her theory on why Hamilton has become such a

huge cultural phenomenon. Though the article didnt provide data, Rogers didnt stray too far

away from what the research supported. She used the research and in her own words, explained

why Hamilton and other works like it could completely capture a culture.