A few days ago, I was walking with my headphones on, listening to Invisible by NTO, when I looked up at the sky and something magical happened. And then, a few days later, NTO did it again. Different song. Different moment. Different question.

I was walking, as usual, with my headphones on and my music on shuffle when 1825 started playing. There are no lyrics, no voice, nobody telling me a story or suggesting what I should feel. Just music. And then, at around the three-minute mark, something happened. A sequence of notes touched my heart. That was exactly how it felt.

And immediately I thought: how is that even possible? How can a sequence of sounds, with no words at all, make me feel something so deeply? So, obviously, I got curious. I wanted to understand what had just happened. How can sound create something that feels so much like an emotion? Why can music sometimes feel almost physical? So I started looking for an explanation.

And this is where things got really interesting. Apparently, our brain doesn’t simply listen to music. While we are listening, it is constantly trying to predict what is going to happen next. It follows patterns, rhythm, harmony and repetition. It creates expectations. It anticipates the next note, even when we have absolutely no idea that it is doing it. And music plays with those expectations.

Sometimes it gives us exactly what our brain is waiting for. Sometimes it delays it. Sometimes it takes us somewhere completely unexpected. A melody builds, tension grows, something changes, something finally resolves. And somewhere inside all of this, our brain can activate some of the same reward systems involved in pleasure and motivation. Dopamine is involved too, and fascinatingly, research suggests that it can be released not only when the musical moment we love finally arrives, but also while we are anticipating it.

Maybe that is why sometimes you can feel a song going somewhere before you have any idea where it is going. But what fascinated me even more is that the reaction doesn’t stay inside the brain. Music can affect the autonomic nervous system, the part of us involved in things like heart rate, breathing and other physical responses we don’t consciously control.

It can give us goosebumps. It can make our skin tingle. It can change the way we breathe. It can create that strange pressure in the chest or that lump in the throat that appears before we even have words for what we are feeling.

So perhaps when I thought those notes had touched my heart, my body was actually part of the reason it felt so real. And then there is the part I find most beautiful.

1825 didn’t tell me anything. No singer was explaining what had happened to them. No sentence about love, loss, freedom, loneliness or happiness. There wasn’t even a single word for my brain to hold on to and turn into a story. There were just sounds.

Vibrations travelling through the air, reaching my ears, becoming electrical signals, being processed by this strange piece of biological machinery inside my skull — and somehow, at the end of that journey, becoming an emotion. That is insane when you really think about it.

We invented music by arranging sounds in particular ways, and somehow those arrangements can make another human being cry, dance, run faster, remember someone, feel safe, feel devastated, get goosebumps or, apparently, walk down a street and suddenly feel as if a few notes have reached directly inside their chest.

And maybe this is exactly why instrumental music fascinates me so much. Words already have meanings. If I say “I miss you”, I have given you a direction. If I say “I’m happy”, I have named the emotion for you. But a note doesn’t mean I miss you. A chord doesn’t mean I’m happy. A beat doesn’t mean I’m free.

And still, somehow, we feel something. Maybe not the same thing. Maybe the person walking past me while listening to 1825 would feel absolutely nothing. Maybe someone else would hear the exact same sequence of notes and experience something completely different.

But for a few seconds that day, those notes touched something in me. No words. No explanation. Just sound. And somehow, my heart understood.