Four simple letters. Bass. The weight of the word, though? That’s a whole new level. Bass has superpowers that indulge euphoria in our brains and chills down our spine. It’s beautiful. Yet, there has never been a concrete answer as to why bass does what it does, until recently. Canada’s McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind decided to find out, performing a specific study detailing the effectsof bass on the human brain. After cautiously monitoring electrical activity in the brains of 35 test subjects, results pointed out that lower-pitched decibels are much easier for homo sapiens to follow.

McMaster Director and neuroscientist Laurel Trainor says, “There is a physiological basis for why we create music the way we do. Virtually all people will respond more to the beat when it is carried by lower-pitched instruments.”  This statement clearly hints at dance music productions, as majority showcase deep bass lines accompanied with high pitched melodies. Despite hearing both frequencies equally, scientists tend to suggest people are more than able when it comes to syncing bass psychologically .

Trainor and her colleagues delved deeper, applying the same sequences of different pitched tones (the same shown to humans) to a computer model ear. The model ear also revealed same results, verifying the fact that the ear can identify low pitched patterns far better. .Cognitive scientist Dr. Tecumseh Fitch of University of Vienna believes that this study “provides a very plausible hypothesis for why bass parts play such a crucial role in rhythm perception.”

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via HuffingtonPost