When music transports you to a different place

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora, and you’re listening to Science Friday. Do you ever hear a song that seems to immediately transport you to a specific time and place? I am a little embarrassed by this, but this song does always get me.

[DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, “CRASH INTO ME”] You’ve got your ball, you’ve got your chain

Tied to me tight, tie me up again

Who’s got the claws in you, my friend

Into your heart I’ll beat again

OK, I’m 13 in Saints Roller Rink. The disco lights are going. I’m holding another seventh grader’s sweaty hand, and it is all very, very awkward.

I’m sure you have your own version, and this auditory wormhole has a name, a musical daydream. And my next guest is kind of obsessed with figuring them out, why they happen, how they happen, and what they tell us about ourselves.

Dr. Elizabeth Margulis is the director of Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab. She’s also the author of the book, Transported, The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams. Elizabeth, thanks for being here.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Thanks so much for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have a relationship with Dave Matthews Band?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: You know what, I have a sibling who has a deep relationship with Dave Matthews Band, so I have a kind of vicarious relationship.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well you’re lucky. OK, so this may be a dumb question, but is there a scientific definition of a daydream?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Well, when it comes to daydreaming, in general, that includes experiences like mind wandering. And when we’re thinking about musical daydreams, they can feel idiosyncratic and subjective in that same way. But we’re learning that, typically, the music is driving the contents of what you’re imagining in really interesting ways.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, tell me about that. How is the music driving the contents of my daydream?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: So in the example that you played, I’m just going to go out on a limb and guess that you literally were in a Saints Roller Rink while that song was playing, and that is one mechanism. That’s the their-playing-our-song phenomenon, where something really just imprints on the sound and can come back decades later and carry with it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Like a smell bringing you back.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Exactly. But the thing about musical cues in these cases, though, is they tend to trigger more of a reliving full of these kind of sensory details than just a simple recollection. But there are also cases where it’s a song you’ve never heard before, and it transports you to some prior phase of your life. And that can’t be explainable in quite the same way.

There are also cases where you hear music and you get lost in some kind of imagining of something that never really happened to you, or is just entirely fantastical and couldn’t really happen to you. And in those cases, the mechanism is a little different.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, do some types of music elicit musical daydreams more easily than others?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Yes. So there’s a known reminiscence bump for music from your teenage years, where you tend to that music more even later in life and have more vivid personal memories associated with it. But there’s also a secondary reminiscence bump for music from your parents’ teenage years. And what we think is going on there is that when you are a tiny person and don’t have control over what’s playing on the kitchen radio, your parents often have the music from their teenage years cued up.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What about genres? I mean, do some genres hit people harder?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Yeah, we’ve seen this kind of daydreaming happen across all the genres we’ve studied, and we’ve tried to study a lot of them. We do find that the more we’re looking at instrumental music that doesn’t have lyrics, the more pronounced we get these kinds of fantastical imaginings, especially.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So what is going on in people’s brain when they’re having a musical daydream?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: We’ve been able to take a look, because now that we’ve done all this behavioral research and we know for certain songs that people won’t have heard before, we put them in the scanner, but we’ve played them for other people outside the scanner, and we know what they’re likely to imagine, we can now bring them in to get an MRI scan and play them either this song or play them a recording of someone speaking the story we know that they’re likely to imagine and then compare their brain activity across these two conditions.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And what do you see?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Using that, we see the emergence of these higher order areas, like the default mode network that carry this kind of meaning of this imagined story across these sensory modalities.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So you’re not just seeing the auditory cortex lighting up, you’re seeing other parts of the brain that deal with narrative.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Exactly. So yes, we see all the things you’d expect when you listen to music in terms of auditory processing and all of that. But we’re also able to see, using this paradigm, that we’re getting this higher order area active as well.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I want to talk about a big part of your research, which is shared musical daydreams, which is so fascinating, for songs people haven’t heard before. So I want to play a clip, and listeners, pay attention to what your brain starts to think about.

[JAPANESE-STYLE MUSIC]

OK, so for me, I get saloon vibes, wooden bar, one of those doors with the slats swinging open. Where do other people’s minds go when they hear this?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Pretty much the same neighborhood. What we often get from people is a lonely cowboy. We get specifically those two words, often, sitting on a porch, looking over a ghost town. Sometimes there’s a tumbleweed involved.

And what’s so interesting here is that’s actually an example of Chinese art music.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So not a cowboy, not a Western tune is what I’m hearing.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: No, really interesting is that it can be music. This is music, maybe even in a style that the participants in our studies may not even been familiar with. Yet, nevertheless, they have this immediate kind of imagining that’s shared with each other about what they’re hearing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Did you run this experiment outside of the US as well?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Yes, we were able, through funding from the National Science Foundation, to also run it in a remote village in China. And there, what we saw is that in exactly the same way, people have these ready narrative imaginings that are very similar to one another. But what comes to mind is very different than what the US participants imagine.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, what did the participants in China imagine?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: So there, we had a sorrowful romantic loss.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, that’s– OK, so romantic is different than cowboy, but sorrowful. It feels like a lonely cowboy. to me.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We’re not that far off.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Right. Those two are in the same sentimental universe, but differences in the kind of concrete semantic details.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to do another example, and we’re going to talk about whether musicians daydream differently. Don’t go away.

Hey, Flora, here. We are wrapping up Science Friday’s fiscal year on June 30, and we could use your support. We’re aiming to raise $100,000 to close out our budget. And with your help, I know we can do it. If Science Friday is valuable to you, if you rely on our reporting to make sense of the world, or even just to give you your daily dose of joy and wonder, please consider going to sciencefriday.com/donate to make a donation.

It’s fast, easy, and secure, and any amount you can swing will help to sustain us in this critical moment. I know I’ve said it before, but I really mean it. Science Friday can only continue with your support. That’s sciencefriday.com/donate, and thanks.

OK, I want to do one more experiment. So listeners, we’re going to play another clip. Lock in, and think about what this piece evokes.

[VIOLIN SOUNDS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: For me, I’m getting candlestick in the library vibes.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: That’s really in the same direction as what our participants said, although I would say milder. People tended to imagine someone alone in a house getting stalked by a murderer.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Whoa. And this was across your two sites in America?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Exactly. Yes. And we saw this in one place coming up again and again and again. We were so surprised that before believing these results, we wanted to run it again in a completely different geographic location, a different State. And we did that. And in came these same reports of sinister home stalking.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Did you run in this village in rural China as well?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: We did. Yes, we were able to take these same excerpts and bring them to this village in rural China, where people speak Dong. And for this particular excerpt, for all the excerpts, they cued stories very easily. And people within the village tended to produce stories that were very similar to other people in the village for particular excerpts.

And in this case, the story that people reported was having fun outside, playing games with friends, which seems really–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Vastly different.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: –far from the US imagining.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What does that tell you?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: What we think is happening here is that if you are a listener in the US, you might care a lot about the fact that this excerpt is atonal and be blinded to other aspects of it. So by atonal, I just mean it’s not following these patterns that let you make sense of a particular key that it’s in or something like that.

Whereas the listeners in this village ostensibly cared less about the fact that it was atonal and could clue in, instead, to the fact that it has these really short notes that jump back and forth between high and low registers. When you start thinking of it that way, you can see how it reads as playful.

And the broader point that I think emerges here is that we have these stable networks of association that emerge across lifetimes of exposure to sounds that can surface and surprise us, but that it really is this shared kind of current of association and meaning that we’re all living within, that can fluctuate and change dynamically with time and place and the kinds of patterns that we’re experiencing in our lives, but can be also be stable enough to be really interesting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, it’s shared within a community, but maybe not shared necessarily more broadly.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: That’s exactly right.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This specific response.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, you’re a musician. Do you and other musicians experience musical daydreams differently?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: I started getting curious about this phenomenon because my students were describing it to me when we were talking.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What, you didn’t have them yourself?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Well, I’ve been brainwashed to a certain extent by getting extensive formal training in a conservatory setting. I was a classical pianist. And so I’d really been trained to listen in this other kind of way and lost touch a little bit, I think, with this intuitive kind of response.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How did you listen? Tell me. Explain the difference.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: To be honest, really critically often. What’s going on with that phrasing? I would have done that differently. Or in more charitable cases, listening to things about how it was put together and how this part relates to that part, just really up in the notes.

And I’m in no way saying that that’s not an incredibly valuable way of engaging with music. I just think there’s this other way of listening that our studies have shown is really widespread and really powerful for people that I had lost sight of, to a certain extent.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you musically daydream now?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Absolutely. 100%. I am reformed.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What takes you there?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: I’ve had a bunch of really special experiences with my teenage children, especially, and with my parents, to a certain extent as well, where we’ve been on long road trips. They’ve shared me the music they love, and it’s this incredible opportunity for really getting behind their ears and get a sense of what they’re hearing in a piece.

Sometimes it’s uncannily, surprisingly shared, and that’s very fun. Sometimes it’s divergent in a way that helps me learn and stretch and become less crusty and become more connected to my children.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s very sweet. Does your work into musical daydreams give us any insight into collective concert experiences? For instance, we had the bassist from Phish on recently, and we talked all about flow state and how those shows are all about finding flow for the musicians and the audience, I think. Is that just a shared musical daydream, or what are your thoughts on that?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: We have actually looked at these experiences in live concerts, and we find the same phenomenon that when people are together in a hall, what they’re imagining during one song is more similar to each other than what they’re imagining across different songs, so it’s music driven in the same way.

And I think what’s lovely there is, in one sense, we’re kind of in our own inner experience in terms of what we’re hearing. And the other, we’re co-present. We’re really alive with other people. And the fact that there’s some thread between the shared reality of occupying space together and the kind of inner experience I think amplifies some of the power that we find in those experiences.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are daydreams good for us?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: 100%, yes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, your biased, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: The literature shows they’re good for us, and that they’re increasingly rare. The opportunities for letting our mind drift are reduced to the extent that we have scrolling video feeds. We’re just constantly sticking stimuli in front of ourselves.

No, we need to have this opportunity to rovingly make sense of our disparate experiences and get practice in the kind of storytelling that helps us make sense of our worlds.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, is that what the literature says, that that’s why they’re good for us, as a way to process our experience, or are there chemical benefits too?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Right. Well, so that there are, for example, clinical conditions where the patterns of spontaneous thought are changed in ways that are harmful. So think of depression and anxiety, when you might be stuck on a ruminating thought. And so what’s lovely about just a song is that it’s so accessible. You can just press Play and jump start some totally different thought scape.

And that kind of movement and flow from one state to another can be really important for well-being, for creativity, and all these kinds of desirable states.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you feel like we should be dosing ourselves with music to cope with our extremely stressful world?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: I think we already dose ourselves with music to cope with our extremely stressful world. I think there’s a lot of intuitive use of music as a tool for mood regulation and for just transportation.

FLORA LICHTMAN: All right, Elizabeth, what song should we play out? What’s the song that you think would make the most listeners go into musical daydream mode?

ELIZABETH MARGULIS: Wow, what a great question. What’s the Enya song that they’re playing at my kid’s daycare whenever my kids were trying to go to sleep? I feel like that’s a good one.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Elizabeth Margulis is director of Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab. She’s also the author of Transported, The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[ENYA, “ORINOCO FLOW”]

(SINGING) Sail away, sail away, sail away

FLORA LICHTMAN: This episode was produced by Kathleen Davis, and if listening to Science Friday makes you feel a certain type of way, let us know. Leave us a review. Obviously, five stars only, please. We’ll catch you next time. I’m Flora Lichtman.

[ENYA, “ORINOCO FLOW”] in the shades of Avalon

From Fiji to Tyree, through the Isles of Ebony

From Peru to Cebu

Copyright © 2026 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/