How come our brains can convince us that we know the lyrics to a song while listening to it, when we really don’t
In: Biology
A lot of our enjoyment of music comes from accurate prediction of what comes next.
That is why we like it when downbeats happen at predictable points in time. Why we like it when melodic phrases end on the tonic. Why certain chord progressions sound incredibly pleasing to us: It is our brain rewarding us for accurate prediction.
Our brains are constantly trying to predict what comes next. When it comes to lyrics we do that mostly through a combination of rhyme and context.
When we hear the phrase “There’s a feeling I get when I look…” our brains start to fill in different ways that that sentence could end. One of those options is “to the west”, because it is both something that you can look at, and also kind of rhymes with “get”.
If it turns out that one of our predictions was correct then this causes our brain to reward itself, which gives us that satisfying experience of “knowing” the lyrics.
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