New Haven, CT – Listening to consonant chord progressions while making eye contact can measurably strengthen brain activity linked to social connection, according to a Yale study published this month in The Journal of Neuroscience. The research, conducted by a team led by neuroscientist Joy Hirsch and musician AZA Allsop, suggests a biological basis for why music often plays a central role in human social rituals.
The study involved twenty pairs of participants who listened to musical sequences while either maintaining eye contact or avoiding it. Researchers used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to monitor brain activity in both individuals simultaneously. Participants were exposed to two types of musical arrangements composed of the same notes: one featuring predictable, harmonious chord progressions and the other an unstructured, unpredictable sequence. The findings revealed that structured chord progressions, combined with direct gaze, significantly increased activity in brain regions associated with social cognition, including the right angular gyrus, right somatosensory association cortex, and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
“These findings provide a plausible neural mechanism for why music – especially music with predictable harmonic structure – can feel socially connecting,” said Dash A. Watts, a research assistant in psychiatry and co-first author of the study, along with Allsop. Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, added that the chord progressions “appear to be a salient musical feature that upregulates social neural systems, particularly in the context of live, face-to-face interaction.”
The research builds on previous work by Hirsch exploring the impact of group drumming and musical interaction on social behavior. Allsop, an assistant professor of psychiatry and a jazz artist, brought his expertise in music production and theory to the collaboration. The team observed a correlation between participants’ subjective feelings of social connectedness and neural activity in specific brain regions – the right superior and middle temporal gyri during eye gaze, and the right angular gyrus during structured chord progressions. Notably, the study also indicated increased cross-brain neural synchrony between partners when listening to the predictable chord progressions, suggesting a shared neural processing of the musical stimulus.
Researchers emphasized the potential implications of these findings for therapeutic interventions. The study suggests that music, particularly compositions utilizing consonant chord progressions, could be used to support individuals experiencing social disconnection, loneliness, or related neuropsychiatric conditions. Adam Noah, Xian Zhang, and Simone Compton, also of Yale, contributed to the research. The study was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Health.
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