Like anyone else, I use music in correlation with mood, whether that’s rage, sad-bastard, drunk—or whatever. Even happy. You do too. Music effects mood. No kidding.Well, new research from the University of Groningen suggests that music also effects how we perceive the world—not just through what lens we perceive it, but the very nature of what we perceive. It’s pretty goofy on paper: subjects were tasked with identifying smiley faces while listening to happy or sad music. Simply: if they were listening to happy music, they might recognize a smiley face even if they weren’t shown one.While it’s not quite the happy-acid hallucination it might sound, researcher Jacob Jolij has this to say in the science journal PLoS ONE:Seeing things that are not there is the result of top-down processes in the brain. Conscious perception is largely based on these top-down processes: your brain continuously compares the information that comes in through your eyes with what it expects on the basis of what you know about the world. The final result of this comparison process is what we eventually experience as reality. Our research results suggest that the brain builds up expectations not just on the basis of experience but on your mood as well.Watch this several dozen times and let us know what happens. Thanks.
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