I listen to Puccini, others listen to rock, while others still listen to some horrid musical genre called drum and bass. It would be obvious to point out that music plays a central role in our lives, but what is specifically interesting about music is how it reinforces and defines the personal spaces we choose to live in. This is something that Dr. Harry Witchel, of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, calls “social territory”. As he explains in his new book, “it is not a place – it is a state of mind that triggers various behaviours of empowerment.”

The common garden robin is the flagship species of our great British birds. Competition for territory between male robins and other perching birds, such as warblers, is known to be determined by singing. Two males will have a singing showdown until one of them gives up, and thus a territory or “home range” is gained. But in contrast to the animal kingdom, music has no physical function for humans. In 1999, Nature published a paper detailing an attempt to understand the human neurological response to music. The research team explained in their paper that “music has no intrinsic survival value, but it still evokes powerful emotions”.

Dr. Witchel’s new book You Are What You Hear explores this topic – what effect does music have, and why does it so powerfully elicit certain behaviours in us. He recently tore through the stale fug of the Royal Institution to give an exuberant talk on this social function of music in humans. Music we enjoy provides a sense of ownership and belonging through associative memories. It also increases our confidence. He explained that this is why car drivers can be so rude, because while listening to their favourite music in this safe and protected bubble they own, they can ignore other motorists.

Sex, as probably the most intimate, private and vulnerable of human activities, usually takes place in our bed at home. This is the very heart of our social territory, and equates to our ‘nest’. It is the biggest, most driving reason why we all want to own territory. Sex between two people in this nest creates “joint social territory,” and this is enhanced if the couple are listening to music they both enjoy. Evidence suggests they will feel more synchronised and coordinated and subsequently the sex should be more mind blowing and intimate.

If our beds are the safest and most comfortable places to have sex, why do people fantasise about sex in more unusual places

But if our beds are the safest and most comfortable places to have sex, why do people fantasise about sex in more unusual places? What Dr. Witchel argues is that when someone is in the right mood, perhaps enhanced by a good day followed by a few cocktails and some banging tunes in a happening new club, then sex can be used to “borrow feelings of territory” even in a foreign situation. Sex is not the only goal in these situations; otherwise people would just wait until they got home. So Dr. Witchel suggests that people want to dominate the social space, as well as have sex. And as music evokes powerful emotions in us then the music, sex and territory all become tangled in a charged and intense web.

Brian Sheridan owns a swingers club in London called The F Club. He explained that although his different crowds want different music, his DJs must always “interpret the mood of the floor to create an atmosphere that is inspirationally sexual. The music needs to be sexy, erotic and soulful.” Brian explained how the evening builds up with more and more dance music climaxing with the funky house genre when it’s time for punters to get a little more risqué with one another. Funky house is best described as pumping, often fast-paced, very disco and occasionally a little like porn music.

In the last few years Brian has observed that the “younger sector want R&B.” Based on the theories suggested by Dr. Witchel, R&B music encompasses the worlds of today’s youth and is therefore familiar and comforting to them. This genre is part of their everyday social territory and is likely to make them more confident engaging in sex in this foreign environment. So while funky house is most likely not the musical genre people have sex to in their bedrooms, its thumping beats and the heady atmosphere it creates can encourage people out of their comfort zone.

Our behavioural responses to music differ in response to music choice, as witnessed in, for example, sex clubs, and research has shown that our neurological activity parallels this depending on if we’re listening to what we personally consider good or bad music. Our perception of and emotional response to music affects everyone’s brains differently.

The research team responsible for the Nature paper found there were changes in cerebral blood flow to regions of the brain that became activated when listening to pleasant music. Test subjects listened to six versions of a piece of music with varying degrees of dissonance while undergoing PET scans. Findings suggest that the neural processes occurring when responding to pleasant/unpleasant music are similar to those occurring when experiencing pleasant/unpleasant emotions. So, when we experience emotions in response to music, blood flow to the affected regions of the brain increases to cope with our increased demand for glucose at this time of high activity.

MRI scanning can look at such changes in the brain with more sophistication, testing regions with stimuli to create maps that show which regions become active in response to which stimuli. This has been done for a variety of stimuli, including music. For comparison, Dutch scientists took MRIs of male brains during ejaculation (only in the Netherlands would this be remotely possible) to see which regions were activated. They then compared this with other activities that elicit a similar response in these same regions. Music activates the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, which acts as a pleasure centre. Other activities known to activate this region are taking cocaine and heroin. Despite cocaine being a depressant and heroin a stimulant, both activities elicit pleasure or a ‘reward’ feeling and hence the VTA is stimulated while taking either of these. Similarly for drugs and music, the VTA is activated in male and female brains during orgasms, which partly explains why music and sex have such a positive-feedback mechanism during our desire to increase or further define our social territory.