music & the body

That mysterious perfect pitch. We all may have it when we're born. A few of us seem to retain it. Perhaps those with a particular mutation on chromosome eight. Apparently it's also a European thing. Wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the scale the researchers are using is probably Western European?

More universal is the correlation between music and bodily responses. Our appreciation of music is not simply emotional or aesthetic. Tempo and volume changes produce coinciding changes in listeners' heart rate, blood pressure, breathing... Most of this is just affirmation of what the avid music listener already knows, feels, but researchers are trying to understand the 'why' of our responses to music.