低音会让人更想翩翩起舞(上)

This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是凯伦·霍普金。

Ever notice that some music just really makes you want to dance?

为什么一听到某些音乐你就会不由自主地想跳起舞来？

Well, a new study shows that it is, indeed, all about the bass.

嗯，一项新研究表明，这和音乐里的低音有关。

Because researchers have found that, during a concert, boosting the bass bumps up the boogying.

研究人员发现，在音乐会期间加入更多的低音会让人更多地随音乐起舞。

The results appear in the journal Current Biology.

相关结果发表在《当代生物学》杂志上。

Music and musical rhythm have been kind of fascinating to me for a long time, since I was a kid. In particular, the way that they make us feel.

从我还是个孩子开始，我就对音乐和音乐节奏十分着迷，特别是它们带给人们的感觉。

Daniel Cameron is a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University.He also plays drums.

丹尼尔·卡梅隆是麦克马斯特大学的博士后。他还是个鼓手。

As a drummer, you’re interested in making the crowd want to move and feel good and give a good pleasurable time feel.

作为一名鼓手，你感兴趣的是如何让人群律动起来，心情愉悦，沉浸享受。

And this is related to the work I do in science.

这就涉及到了我的科学研究领域。

Cameron and his colleagues want to understand how music can engender an almost irrepressible urge to feel our bodies in motion.

卡梅隆和同事想弄明白，音乐是如何让我们的身体产生几乎无法抑制的冲动，让我们感觉身体也随之律动的：

And we knew from anecdotal evidence and other experimental evidence that there was an association between bass and dancing.

基于各种故事和实验证据，我们发现低音和起舞之间存在一定关联。

So, people who enjoy electronic dance music, or EDM, report that the thrumming bass produces a sensation that makes them want to move.

喜欢电子舞曲的人表示，持续的低音会产生一种让他们想要随之律动的感觉。

And some studies have shown that our movements are more fine-tuned when we’re locked onto bass notes.

而一些研究表明，在锚定低音音符时，我们的动作节奏会更精准。

So, for example, if you have people tap along to a sequence of tones, their tapping is slightly more accurate, they’re more synchronized…when those tones are low in frequency compared to high in frequency.

例如，如果你让人们随着一系列的音调打节拍，他们的拍子会稍微准确一些，更一致一些——当这些音调的频率较低的时候。

So the researchers set out to determine: If you add more bass to music, will it cause more dancing?

因此研究人员开始实验去确定：如果你在音乐中加入更多的低音，会引发更多的起舞吗？

Now, they didn’t want to manipulate the bass line in a way that was obvious.

他们不想以一种显而易见的方式对低音进行操纵。

Because then people might consciously decide to step up their stepping out.

因为那样做人们可能会有意识地增加他们的舞动。

That might be interesting…

那可能会很有趣……

But it would also muddy the results…like if someone in a drug trial knows they’re getting the real deal and not a placebo.

但也会混淆实验结果，这就好像药物试验中的受试者知道他们用的是真药而不是安慰剂一样。

So we wanted to do a subtle manipulation, a very consciously undetectable manipulation.

我们想做一种微妙的操纵，一种非常难被察觉的操纵。

So they broke out a set of very very low frequency speakers.

他们搞出了一套非常非常低频的扬声器。

These are specialized speakers. Kind of like sub-subwoofers. People might have subwoofers as part of their stereo system.

这些是非常专业的扬声器，有点像低音炮。低音喇叭常常作为立体声系统的一部分。

And these are speakers that play even lower frequencies than most systems are able to do. Even lower frequencies than we think are typically able to be heard.

它们播放的频率低于大多数系统所能播放的频率，甚至比我们通常能够听到的频率还要低。