Sometimes you get goosebumps when you hear your favorite song. This feeling is called "frisson." Scientists studied people's brains while they listened to music that gave them chills.

The "reward" part of the brain became active, like when we eat tasty food. The brain also released dopamine even before the best part of the song. Not everyone gets chills from music.

During a favorite song, some listeners feel a shiver run down their back. This experience is called frisson, or musical chills, and scientists have studied it with brain scans, although each study tested only about ten people. In 2001, Canadian researchers asked people to listen to music they had chosen because it gave them chills.

The stronger the chills, the more active the brain's reward system became. This is the same system that responds to food and praise. In 2011, researchers at the same university found that dopamine, a brain chemical linked to pleasure and motivation, was released at the peak moments of the music. One part of the brain became more active just before the peak, as if the brain were waiting for the best part.

The shiver that runs down the spine during a powerful piece of music, known as frisson, has become a window into the brain's reward system. In 2001, researchers at McGill University scanned ten participants listening to self-selected music that reliably gave them chills. As chill intensity rose, activity increased in reward-related regions such as the ventral striatum and decreased in the amygdala, which is linked to fear.

A decade later, the same group used a special PET technique to show that dopamine is released in the striatum at moments of peak emotion. Combining this with fMRI data, they found that the caudate was more involved in the seconds before a peak, while the nucleus accumbens was more involved during the peak itself.

So anticipation appears to be rewarding too. These studies were small and could only show links, so a 2019 drug study offered stronger evidence: boosting dopamine increased musical pleasure, while reducing it decreased pleasure. Chills often occur when music departs from expectations, such as a sudden change in volume or an unexpected chord. Not everyone experiences frisson, and people high in openness to experience report it more, although this link is correlational.