Project time
The course modules are finished and it's time to get serious with my research project. I'm investigating whether or not musical performance releases endorphins in humans. For the past month or two I've been attending various drums circles in an effort find participants. The most intense is samba drumming, where you stand (or bounce around) in a room with 30+ people who all specialize in making a racket. It's brilliant. The african is harder to grasp personally, as the feeling is a lot different from the straight 4-4 rock I've grown up on.
The general procedure follows something like this: measure participants pain threshold (pain induced by a blood pressure cuff held at a fixed pressure) before and after musical performance as well as have them fill in a few short questionnaires about mood changes and personal experience with the performance.
Why am I doing this? Ultimately it's to explain why the capacity for music has evolved and is present in humans. There are several hypothesis for this phenomenon and they are not mutually independent. Some main contenders involve sexual selection and mate attraction, a mother-infant language called 'motherese', considering music and dance a consequence-free domain for children to develop and interact in, and promoting group cohesion and function. Facilitating group cohesion is the hypothesis I am testing. Music can be considered auditory grooming, and if this is the case, it should release endorphins much like manual grooming (which reduces stress in primates, lowers aggression rates, etc). Listening to music releases endorphins, but no one has actually documented that playing releases endogenous opiates as well. I chose drum groups as aside from singing, drumming is arguably the oldest form of music around. Plus it's something I enjoy.
more to come later.
The general procedure follows something like this: measure participants pain threshold (pain induced by a blood pressure cuff held at a fixed pressure) before and after musical performance as well as have them fill in a few short questionnaires about mood changes and personal experience with the performance.
Why am I doing this? Ultimately it's to explain why the capacity for music has evolved and is present in humans. There are several hypothesis for this phenomenon and they are not mutually independent. Some main contenders involve sexual selection and mate attraction, a mother-infant language called 'motherese', considering music and dance a consequence-free domain for children to develop and interact in, and promoting group cohesion and function. Facilitating group cohesion is the hypothesis I am testing. Music can be considered auditory grooming, and if this is the case, it should release endorphins much like manual grooming (which reduces stress in primates, lowers aggression rates, etc). Listening to music releases endorphins, but no one has actually documented that playing releases endogenous opiates as well. I chose drum groups as aside from singing, drumming is arguably the oldest form of music around. Plus it's something I enjoy.
more to come later.
posted by Ian at 4:58 PM
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