Your Brain Can Recognize a Song in Just 100 Milliseconds | Tech & Science - Newsweek

Scientists played familiar and unfamiliar songs to a group of volunteers, and monitored their brains, explains Kashmira Gander, Reporter at Newsweek.

Scientists have studied how long it takes people to recognize familiar music. A stock image shows a man listening to music through headphones.
Photo: Getty

Our brains can recognize familiar songs in as little as 100 milliseconds, a study suggests.

The research involved 22 people who listened to song snippets less than a second long. Scientists at University College London played segments from songs to 10 participants that were either familiar, sounded similar to their chosen tracks, or they had never heard before. The remaining 12 volunteers didn't know any of the songs, and acted as the control group.

The researchers tracked how the volunteers' pupils responded while listening to the tracks, as this is suggestive of brain processes, as well as their brain activity.

Between 100 to 300 milliseconds after hearing the short clip of the familiar song, the participants' pupils dilated. The part of their brains linked to memory also lit up...

Associate Professor Keith Schneider, co-author of the study and director of the Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging at the University of Delaware, told Newsweek at the time: "We found that people with absolute pitch have a larger primary auditory cortex and also have broader frequency tuning, so each part of the cortex responds to a wider range of frequencies. 
Read more...

Source: Newsweek