Live music triggers much stronger emotions than streamed music
According to a study by the University of Zurich, live concerts have a greater emotional impact on people than recorded music. The latter lacks a human component.
A team at the University of Zurich led by Sascha Frühholz, Professor of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, has investigated how live and recorded music influence emotional processing in the human brain.
For the study, a pianist continuously intensified his playing depending on the emotional reaction of the audience, which was measured in real time using magnetic resonance imaging. In comparison, the same pieces of music were played to the participants by the same pianist as a recording, but without a feedback loop.
According to Frühholz, the experiment showed that pleasant and unpleasant emotions portrayed in live music evoke much higher and more consistent emotional activity than recorded music. The live performance also stimulated a more active exchange of information throughout the brain, which indicates strong emotion processing at the affective and cognitive levels of the brain.
More info: https://www.news.uzh.ch/de/articles/media/2024/Livemusik.html
