Expression of feelings through music is not a new practice. Indians used these through various types of Raga. The types of Raga are based on collections of pitches with specific scales and modes. Each Raga has its own characteristics to evoke specific feelings among listeners. Feelings are directly attached to personality. Similar findings were observed in a study published on 29th November in PLOS ONE dealing with moral values in connection with musical choices through lyrics and audio.
1,480 participants were aligned with psychometric scores after listening music from their 5 favourite artists. The narrative, attitude, emotions and valence of each song were identified using lexicon-based approaches and BERT (bidirectional transformers for language understanding) embeddings. Moral values were predicted based on machine learning approach and assessing the predictive power of lyrics and acoustics features. They observed the emotional sharing as per the textual features. Audio worked as booster in conditions. Multimodal models effectively projected the moral values.
Diversified studies have revealed the effects of certain frequencies on stimulation of specific portion of brain to produce neurotransmitters related to emotions. Depending upon chord, specific neurotransmitters are released for positive or negative emotions. Indian authors have related avarohana (descending notes) and arohana (ascending notes) respectively with inward-oriented feelings and upward mobility.
In India, the ancient system of Nada Yoga has clearly discussed the use of sound waves for meditation and uplifting of consciousness. Studies have shown the psychosomatic effects of Raga. Individual studies have highlighted the specific effects as Carnatic raga-Bilahari based music therapy has presented positive effects in reduction of anxiety, distress and sleep disturbances. In depth studies are needed to find out the effects of raga in chronic diseases or other related problems with limited treatment options. The mechanisms of action of these raga separately would be interesting to study.