Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music (opens in new tab)

Here is a wonderful recording of "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" played in Gloucester Cathedral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY&list=RDihx5LCF1y...

I'm going to chime in with some more examples of (for me) chills inducing classical music pieces:

- Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor (very dark)

- Rossinis Barber of Seville Overture

- Mozarts "The Magic Flute" Overture (helps if you know the opera)

- Mozarts Symphony No. 39 in E, as soon as the allegro starts

- Schuberts Symphony No. 8 "Unfinished", the whole thing makes me want to burst with excitement

Thank you for sharing the track: I got chills within the first few seconds... could it be a matter of the high-harmonic frequencies of the strings, and the crescendo combined with the spacious reverb of the place where the music is performed?

Scientific studies grasping for explanations to spiritual things always give me a smile. This is the way. It’s about opening up to the energetic experience being conveyed through the medium (art, music, whatever). Has nothing to do with individual variations in biology or physiology.

I didn't know Sogno di Volare. It does work very well, quite intense.

I got me thinking... I've never taken any mind altering drugs, so I wonder how the experience compares. I guess that even if not in the same league, being "free" and without apparent side effects this is quite the "feelgood" bang for the buck.

I had a similar experience in my genetics class in grad school- the professor explained that children of musicians were more likely to have perfect pitch, hence it was a genetic trait. Some folks suggested that perhaps it was possible that children of musicians were subjected to lots of labelled and unlabelled training data (musical notes) making it "environment" rather than genetic.

I pretty much figure from the title it's self reported and yep: "We gather self-reports from a genotyped sample of thousands of partly related individuals from the Netherland".

And the author summary goes on to state: "Many people experience chills when listening to music, reading poetry, or viewing art. Yet not everyone feels these reactions in the same way.". So the subjects aren't even self reporting the same thing.

> In the land of drug development [...]

Fine, but this is the land of genome-wide association studies. I am unaware of any overlap, considering that such 'GWAS' studies require tens or hundreds of thousands of participants to get any definitive signal... Such work is the nature of statistical genetics.

> So I question whether they might be fitting a model to noise here.

On what basis?

Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor consistently does it for me (https://youtu.be/8V41D0Uczf0). I stopped and stared the first time I heard it (thanks Wednesday Addams!), and learning that it is a reflection on the humanity-altering changes of WW1 makes it more emotional than just another ASMR tingle (which I also sometimes get, as does my daughter).

You'll have to content yourself with those listed in HN comments.

For the nerds, I'll add the scene from the movie Excalibur when Percival, near the end, throws the Excalibur to the lady of the Lake—with the score playing loudly…