And all this time I thought this was perfectly normal:
[R]esearchers found that the brains of individuals who occasionally feel a chill while listening to music were wired differently than the control subjects. They had more nerve fibers connecting [their] auditory cortex, the part of the brain that processes sound, to their anterior insular cortex, a region involved in processing feelings. The auditory cortex also had strong links to parts of the brain that may monitor emotions.
Just to be sure, I tested myself. Before anyone arrived to work this morning, I put on Job: A Masque for Dancing by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. I chose the fourth track—”Scene III: Minuet of the Sons of Job and Their Wives”—and bumped the volume up as loud as my little Bowers & Wilkins T7 could safely handle.
Scene III: Minuet of the Songs of Job and Their Wives
As the strings and winds moved slowly yet inexorably toward the brass fanfare announcing the arrival of Satan, I could feel the goosebumps on my arms and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And when the full orchestra finally unleashed its triple-fortissimo fury, my spine was practically electric. Time for a cigarette.
And to think some people don’t get to experience this.
