Loui, however, doesn’t subscribe to Pinker’s idea. Instead, she tends to prefer the idea that music is a “transformative tool” that helped us build the human mind and further society. Think of it as a kind of sandbox, she says. After we have performed all the most important duties to survive, we use music as an arena to play safely, train our minds and expand our experiences. During that playtime, we also use it to develop our emotional awareness, and to bond with others. “You don’t play alone in sandboxes but with other people,” she says. Music may have also helped us exercise our emotional communication.

If that’s the case, musical frisson could be our reward for exercising our minds and our societies in this way. There is no hard evidence, but Loui is intrigued by recent studies showing that the denser the wiring between the auditory, social and emotional parts of the brain, the more skin orgasms you feel. That could, perhaps, be a neurological signature of music’s social importance. Others have found that making music and dancing together produces more altruistic and cohesive groups, with one study finding that chill-inducing music is particularly good at promoting altruism in the lab’s subjects. Maybe it is the rush of endorphins from a skin orgasm that helps promote the communal goodwill.

These are just evolutionary just-so stories, of course. We may never truly understand why music first emerged. But even if it is just a form of auditory cheesecake, it is a legal high we could ill afford to live without today: it defines us, our friendships and offers a soundtrack to the most important moments in our lives. The fact it tickles the same pleasure centres as cocaine helps underline all these benefits, and means we will always keep coming back for more. As Loui herself might agree: who needs sex and drugs when you’ve got Rachmaninov?

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