For as long as sound has existed, music has always been tied to deep emotion in all living beings. It's one of the stimuli that are most likely to evoke a memory or intense reaction, one of the strange phenomena that allow humans to access a different mental or emotional space than the one they were in before. The reason for these sensations, as discovered in a study by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, is that the experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain responsible for tangible pleasures such as food, sex, or drugs. Certain instances of dopamine release were associated with "chills"--physical changes in heart rate, breathing, and temperature, due to listening to music.

Peter Economy, Inc Magazine