New research suggests that emotions such as anger, sadness, and happiness are expressed in the same way in music and movement across cultures.

 Live Science reports on this interesting discovery.  In the past, scientists have found that animals like different music than humans and that music stimulates the same part of our brain as food, sex, and love.  The study is outlined in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers asked  Dartmouth undergraduates and members of a remote Cambodian hill tribe to use sliding bars to adjust traits such as the speed, pitch, or regularity of music.  Interestingly, both groups used the same types of characteristics to express primal emotions.  The study also found that the same types of patterns were used to express the same emotions in animations of movement in both cultures.

Outside observer Jonathan Schooler, a professor of brain and psychological Sciences at the University of California at Santa Barbara,  said, “The study suggests why music is so fundamental and engaging for us.  It takes advantage of some very, very basic and , in some sense, primitive systems that understand how motion relates to emotion.“

Thalia Wheatley, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth University, says that the team traveled to the remote highlands of Cambodia to verify if this trend held across cultures. They asked 85 members of the Kreung tribe to perform the same task as the Dartmouth students.

Interestingly, the Kreung tended to put the slider bars in roughly the same positions as Americans did to capture different emotions, and the position of the sliders was very similar for both music and emotions.  Wheatley pointed out that none of the tribes’ people had any exposure to Western music or media,

“Emotion is the same thing no matter whether it’s coming in through our eyes or ears.“

Scientists have been studying fear for quite some time and it is a fact that you can be “scared to death”.  NPR has reported on the phenomenon of Voodoo Death as doctors refer to it.

Dr. Martin Samuels interviewed with NPR and this is some of what he said:

Well, it’s a strong emotional reaction of any kind [that can cause Voodoo death]. It can be positive, as you said in the lead, or negative. And when this happens suddenly, there is a pulse of autonomic activity, we call it, which means automatic activity of the brain, which releases chemicals, natural chemicals related to adrenaline, which I’m sure everybody has heard about.  And that chemical is mainly good, but there’s a small, small risk that it can do harm to the various organs, including your heart.

The interviewer goes onto ask Dr. Samuel, “And you say it doesn’t have to be a scary experience”.  Dr. Samuels response, “No, just a sudden,usually unexpected powerful emotional experience.  A scary experience would be one example of it, but a powerful positive emotion can do it as well.  I have an example of a guy who hit a hole in one, he played golf his whole life and hit a ball over a rise and didn’t see where it went.  He and his partner went over and looked down on the green, and the ball was in the hole.  And he said wow, I hit a hole in one, I can die now, and he did.”

Extreme you say?  Maybe, but science has confirmed that it does happen.  This just might make you think twice next time you decide to pull a prank on someone.  If you’d like to listen to the entire Podcast click here.

What do you think about Voodoo Death?  Do you have an experience with this you can share with the Humintell Community?