Blog 2: Unexpected Rewards at Stade de France

360-degree view of Stade de France: Photo by me

Last Saturday night, all together with the NBB Paris group we have gone to watch the national final rugby match at Stade de France, with the intention of learning about possible head injuries the players could acquire and the long tern consequences of having repeated concussions. But we were also there to have some fun and since we knew neither of the teams, we rooted for the team whose flag we found on our seats: Montpellier Hérault Rugby.

My picture with the Montpellier Hérault flag: at Stade de France, photo by me

We actually generated pretty interesting data by everyone picking one player and counting the total head-hits during the whole game. Here is our data set:

3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 12, 12, 13, 14, 45

Box plot of our class data. Generated by me using http://www.alcula.com/calculators/statistics/box-plot/

In a confusing turn of events Montpelier lost the match but won the championship. So, in a state of not knowing what to feel like we went into the next part of the show: the Mika concert!

Start of the Mika concert: Light show, photo by me

I had only previously listened to Mika in French class before, and all I could think about his music was that it was rather eccentric and very high pitched. But this time around I realized something different. I liked and enjoyed his music way more than the first time around. Which is why I wanted to look into this phenomenon.

According to the review paper by Salimpoor et al. 2015, how much we enjoy music has a lot to do with our expectations of the next measure. Our brains are evolved to recognize patterns and continuously predict the next step. It may sound boring, but the more your brain gets what it expected, the more our reward centers (caudate, putamen, and especially Nucleus Accumbens) seem to be activated.

Figure 2 from Salimpoor et al., 2011: In this study the participants got to choose their own pleasurable music. The figure shows the pleasure centers of the brain responding.

So, I suppose that explains why I liked Mika better the second time around. I have gotten used to his flavor of unique and my brain has decoded his pattern. And as unexpected as it is in our world that values originality so much, predictable is actually less boring and enjoyable when it comes to music.

Here is a heart from both Mika and me to you: Mika’s stage while being built in Stade de France, photo by me

Here is a link to some Mika songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md5RSnVUuo&start_radio=1&list=RDEMmWyiAAUINDCFSwOkigY7Cw&ab_channel=MIKAVEVO

References:

  • Salimpoor, V., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience14(2), 257-262. doi: 10.1038/nn.2726
  • Salimpoor, V., Zald, D., Zatorre, R., Dagher, A., & McIntosh, A. (2015). Predictions and the brain: how musical sounds become rewarding. Trends In Cognitive Sciences19(2), 86-91. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.12.001

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