Just the sounds of the 1960 movie thriller Psycho may be enough to get your heart racing. Even when we may not be aware of it, (hear ) music can affect our bodies as ( good)as our minds. But are the physiological effects of music unique one culture or are they more general?
(find )out the answer, researchers enlisted 40 Canadians from downtown Montreal and 40 Pygmies from the Congo rainforest. All the volunteers ( listen) to musical clips from the movies Star Wars and Schindler's List, and to music from Pygmy culture.
As the ( participate)listened, the researchers observed their ( emotion) reactions, as well as changes in heart rate, breathing rate and palm-sweat production. The two groups disagreed about whether a particular musical selection was happy or sad. But they all had similar levels of arousal.
These findings suggest that some aspects of how we react to music are universal, rather strictly cultural.
The study (publish )in the journal Frontiers in Psychology last month. It showed fundamental acoustical(音响的) features seem to be responsible for the similar responses of the Canadians and the Congolese Pygmies.
Does that finding mean that science can help create the world's most (universe )catching pop song?