Members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir raise their voices in unison — and perhaps unify their heart rates, too.
by Anna Haensch NPR News
… But what really struck him was that it took almost no time at all for the singers’ heart rates to become synchronized. The readout from the pulse monitors starts as a jumble of jagged lines, but quickly becomes a series of uniform peaks. The heart rates fall into a shared rhythm guided by the song’s tempo.
“The members of the choir are synchronizing externally with the melody and the rhythm, and now we see it has an internal counterpart,” Vickhoff says.
This is just one little study, and these findings might not apply to other singers. But all religions and cultures have some ritual of song, and it’s tempting to ask what this could mean about shared musical experience and communal spirituality. Read the full article here.