“MUSIC, ESPECIALLY THE MUSIC THAT MOVES US MOST, CAN BOND PEOPLE TOGETHER” wrote the authors of this study who demonstrated (unsurprisingly) that music listener’s cortical brain activity mirrored the music performer’s activity. This study went a step further however to show that the greater the mirroring (‘inter-brain coherence’) the more the listener was “fond of the performance”. The researchers (based in Shanghai, Harbin and Stockholm) used an imaging technique (functional near infra-red spectroscopy) and recorded levels of activity in the brain cortex areas of a violinist playing popular pieces of music. Then they played a video recording to listeners, one by one, and made similar recordings of their brain activity.
The article reviewed studies and literature about musical connections between performer and listener. They reference one article to note that ‘music can ignite activities that are crucial for survival, for instance, social connections.’ Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that when audiences listened to and enjoyed a musical performance there was increased activity in auditory and reward-related brain regions as well as stronger connectivity among those brain areas in individual listeners. We have all experienced the pleasure and strong emotions associated with music and the subjective sense of connection to the performer(s). This connection can be associated with synchronised movement (clapping hands, swaying, dancing etc), emotional resonance and shared understanding. The researchers reviewed other research on synchrony of brain activity among people involved in musical activities. These previous studies found parallel brain activity across performers and across audiences.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811920301427
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/music-synchronizes-the-brains-of-performers-and-their-audience/