Does anyone remember this ridiculous thing called a "rave"?
Waaaayyyy back in the nether years of my youth, these parties were semi-popular excuses to take copious amounts of MDMA (ecstasy) and listen to really bad techno music.
Aside from the love of MDMA, why were these things so popular? As a more general question, why do people enjoy music, and music with lots of heavy bass in particular? Tony Bell turned me on to one interesting idea a few months back, that I will explain to you now.
Your brain is a big mass of nerves cells called neurons that emit pulses of electrical activity to communication with each other. At a close glance, this activity appears chaotic, but there is some underlying structure to it; there are waves of activity called neural oscillations (brain waves) that travel across your brain. There are different kinds (frequencies) of brain waves: alpha waves oscillate 8-12 times per second, delta waves oscillate 1-4 times per second, and so on.
Lots of research has shown that these waves help to synchronize the activity of neurons, enhancing cognitive processes like memory and attention.
What, you might ask, do neural oscaillations have to do with raves?
Well, it has been demonstrated that your brain waves synchronize (lock in to) external stimuli, like music, when that stimulus has the right frequency. Listen closely to the bass component (like the bass drum) of your favorite bass-heavy song, and you should notice that it has a few beats per second. In other words, it occurs at precisely the frequency of delta waves in your brain.
For example, if you google "rave music", you find this youtube clip. Try listening to the bass line and counting how many beats you get in a 5-second window. It's probably around 10-14, depending on where you are in the song. In other words, right in the delta range, that would allow your attention to lock on to it.
If you pay close attention, you'll find beats that fall neatly into the alpha range as well (8-12 beats per second).
So.. what's my point? Well, maybe these brain oscillations are one of the reasons why bass can have such a strong effect on people.
I hope this provides some food for thought when you're at burning man this fall, or your own favorite music scene.
