2 . In a world of music streaming services, access to almost any song is just a few clicks away. Yet, the live performance lives on. People still fill sweaty basements, muddy fields and gilded concert halls to hear their favourite musicians play. And now neuroscientists might know why—live music engages the brain’s emotion centres more than its recorded counterpart.
Concerts are immersive (沉浸式的) social experiences in which people listen to and feel the music together through crescendos, key changes and rhythmic drops. Moreover, they are dynamic — artists can adapt their playing according to the crowd’s reaction.
It was this last difference that led neuroscientists, based at the Universities of Zurich and Oslo, to study the brain responses of people listening to music. In the “live” experiment, participants lay in an MRI scanner listening to the music through earphones, while a pianist was positioned outside the room. The pianist was shown the participant’s real-time brain activity as a form of feedback. In the recorded condition, participants listened to pre-recorded versions of the same tunes.
The scientists were interested in how live music affected the areas of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly the amygdala, an area deep inside the brain. The results, just published in the journal PNAS, revealed that live music had a significantly greater emotional impact. Whether the music conveyed happiness or sadness, dynamic live performances led to increased activity not only in the amygdala but also other parts of the brain’s emotion processing network. The researchers also found that participants’ brain activity tracked the acoustic (声学的) features of the music, like tempo and pitch, far more closely when it was played live.
While the study didn’t fully recreate the live concert experience, the findings suggest that artists’ ability to adjust their performance in real time contributes to the emotional resonance (共鸣) of live music. Some musical acts now attempt to recreate live concerts, such as ABBA Voyage, an immersive pre-recorded VR concert, but without artists’ capacity to read audience’s mood and respond accordingly, it will never quite match the real thing.
1. Why do people attend live shows despite music streaming services?
| A．Because they prefer being with friends at a concert. |
| B．Because they enjoy the process of finding popular music. |
| C．Because they intend to meet their favorite musicians in person. |
| D．Because they value the emotional connection live music brings. |
2. The role of the pianist play in the “live” experiment is to _______.
| A．observe the participants’ brain activity as feedback |
| B．compare the effectiveness of live performances and recorded ones |
| C．provide live accompaniment to participants inside the MRI scanner |
| D．demonstrate their ability to read and respond to the audience’s mood |
3. What did the study published in PNAS find about the impact of live music on the brain?
| A．Live music affected only the amygdala of the brain. |
| B．The brain responded more intensely to acoustic features of live music. |
| C．Live music had a reduced emotional impact compared to recorded music. |
| D．The participants’ brain activity was especially sensitive to dynamic music. |
4. What does the author suggest by mentioning ABBA Voyage in the last paragraph?
| A．It fails to create a perfect performing atmosphere. |
| B．It matches the sound quality of live performances. |
| C．It greatly stirs up the audience’s emotional response. |
| D．It lacks artists’ response based on audience’s feedback. |
