What causes the tingling/shivering sensation down your back/spine when you listen to music?

The Hungarian Suicide Song & Suicide Mouse is the only music that sends shivers down my spine.

It happens to lots of people. It’s your emotions, your resonance with the music, letting you feel it in a physical way. I don’t know what the actual mechanism is.

emotions and passion.

“Music answers questions we havent learned to ask yet.”
me

Rythm?

It’s chi. Chi is sometimes translated as breath. It is what acupuncturists and yoga practitioners and Tai Chi practitioners move around their bodies when they practice. It often feels like a tingling, or a kind of electricity zinging through your body.

Music can make this chi go right up your spine and out the top of your head. I used to think of it as a rush before I knew the Asian version of it.

In any case, it used to happen to me—no, it still does happen—at the peak moments in a piece. Especially at concerts, but often during rehearsal, too. If you practice, you can actually learn to make it happen. But music does it, and dancing and acupuncture and several other things, I think.

I think it’s your brain feeling excitement and releasing a chemical… possibly adrenaline which gives you an extra boost in necessary situations that are key for survival. We’re not so concerned with survival anymore so we listen to rock and feel the highs. :)

I believe it has to do with our endocrine system. It is also what responds to fear as well. Maybe to our bodies the opposite of fear is extremely good feelings. Kind of like our response to love or sex only it doesn’t have to actually have a physical touch for the response. I know there have been times when I’ve looked at my husband and I can feel a small shiver go up my back. Its not from fear but from love.

It has happened to me not only with music and art but with certain people as well.I’d go with @wundayatta‘s explanation :)

I’m no scientist, maybe it’s that love hormone that people always talk about, or it could be serotonin.

I get the tingle listening to music too, especially choral stuff; and sometimes even American Idol! I also get a similar feeling sometimes when I’m running. I’ve heard it referred to as the “runner’s high”: I’ll reach a point in my run where I feel strong and have fallen into a good rhythm, and a feeling of elation rises up in me. It’s almost orgasmic.

Luckily we don’t have to fully understand such feelings to enjoy them!

I always get shivers when our concert band plays something epic… it’s cool

Hey, bottomline you are human. happens to me all the time. you think you have chills, you should be in a gunfight trying to apprehend the bad guy. cold chills and the blood pressure to the moon is not uncommon. again, you are human and we all do the same thing. relax, you are surrounded by more humans. your emotions play a big part in your thrill chills.

Interesting responses—especially about what @wundayatta said about the chi.

As I am learning tai chi and becoming more attuned to the use of chi, I’m noticing that when I sing I can hit certain states where my palms are sweating and my body tingling. I assume that if the singer hits this state, and the audience is in rapport, then their spines will tingle.

Neurotransmitters and endorphins flooding our system.

@mattbrowne So serotonin and oxytocin? Aren’t they neurotransmitters? Are there others?

i can actually sit and focus close my eyes and send this rushing-electric- feeling down my spine, but i experience it much during good music, or seeing a bloody battle where a few good stand for good against the whole world and it’s tyranny. and ive never known what it was, but now ive almost harnessed :) just wanted to share :):)

@jeanmay – It’s complicated. Perhaps I should have used the word neuromodulators. Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that acts primarily as a neurotransmitter in the brain. But hormones can be active in other parts of the body as well, not just the brain. An example for oxytocin is breastfeeding. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. Endorphins are not neurotransmitters, but polypeptide compounds that resemble opiates.

I’m not sure which neurotransmitters exactly are involved in experiencing the bodily sensations of listening to music. I’ve once read that intense musical experiences resemble that of having sex when comparing neural activities.

@mattbrowne Cool, thanks!