Music on the Brain
How Music Affects Us
By Bekah Price
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It has long been obvious that music affects people profoundly. What is new, though, is that research is being conducted to determine the effects of music on the brain. Through this research much has been learned about the effects of music on the human body.
In some studies, researchers found that professional musicians have up to 139% more gray matter (cell bodies, axons and dendrites responsible for processing information) in multiple areas of the brain than non- musicians.
The Broca’s area, which is the part of the brain associated with language, is one of those areas. Musical sight-reading is rooted there.
The cerebellum, long thought to control only motor skills, is also larger in size in musicians. It is the seat of tempo and rhythmic synchronization, extremely important elements to musicians.
The thick bundle of neurons connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the Corpus Callosum, is significantly thicker (5-15 %!) in musicians than it is in non-musicians, proportionate to the age at which musical training began. This is due to increased inter-hemisphere traffic resulting from music processing. This strengthening of the communication system makes the brain more effective and efficient. Also, musicians who learned to play a keyboard or string instrument prior to adolescence have larger than normal areas of brain dedicated to touch perception.(1)
There are a few basic principles regarding brain function that are necessary for understanding music’s role in shaping the brain. First, learning takes place when neurons are activated. The more activation, the greater the capacity for learning. Musical activity engages millions of neurons. Second, the principle of “use it or lose it” is especially true of the brain. Learning becomes permanent when neurons make connections to other neurons. There are windows of opportunity for many intellectual functions, including learning to play a musical instrument, learning a foreign language, building vocabulary, developing spatial skills, etc. There are optimal times in human growth and development (mostly from birth to puberty) in which the brain is equipped with a greater capacity to learn in these areas with ease; however it is never too late to learn anything. The brain is malleable and can learn at any age.
Third, there is no musical center in the brain. Musical involvement activates more areas of the brain than any other activity. The right brain is involved with the analytical, structural elements of music, and the limbic system controls the emotional response to music.
Music is an important and extremely useful tool in the way we learn and to deny its power is a waste of a truly wonderful resource. In recent years there have been concerns about some types of music such as Acid Rock having very negative effects on people minds and moods. This type of music imprints an extremely violent image into people’s minds and there has been growing concern about it and tying it in with violent crimes. In cases like this, it only shows how much more we need to study music to fully understand its full impact on the human mind.
Music’s interconnection with society can be seen throughout history. Every known culture on the earth has some form of music. Music seems to be one of the basic actions of humans. However, early music was not handed down from generation to generation or recorded. Hence, there is no official record of “prehistoric” music. Even so, there is evidence of prehistoric music from the findings of flutes carved from bones.
The influence of music on society can be clearly seen from modern history. Music helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. When he couldn’t figure out the right wording for a certain part, he would play his violin to help him. The music helped to get the words from his brain onto the paper.
Albert Einstein(2) is regarded as one of the smartest men who has ever lived. A known fact about Einstein is that when he was young he did extremely poor in school. His grade school teachers told his parents to take him out of school because he was “too stupid to learn” and it would be a waste of resources for the school to invest time and energy in his education. The school suggested that his parents get him an easy, manual labor job as soon as they could. His mother didn’t think that he was stupid. Instead of following the school’s advice, Albert’s parents bought him a violin. He became good at the violin. Music was the key that helped Albert Einstein to become one of the smartest men in history. Einstein himself said that the reason he was so smart was because he played the violin. He especially loved the music of Mozart and Bach. A friend of his, G.J. Winthrow, said that the way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising on his violin.
Are people typically geniuses? Statistically people are probably not. In fact, most people aren’t even intellectually gifted at all. Most people are likely to be pretty much average, maybe a little bit above or below average, but average none the less (average being a person with an IQ of 98). It is universally understood that people strive to learn to become wiser and more informed about the world around them. The more people learn, the more powerful they can become. It is the speed at which people learn that separates the geniuses from the average people. Geniuses don’t run into problems while learning because they learn so fast. It is everyone else that could really use help. One solid way to increase the speed at which people learn is with music. People learn through music and their minds grow faster because of it. Some music, when implemented properly can have positive effects on learning and attitude. Music is a powerful thing, and when we understand its significance, it can bring dramatic changed both positive and negative into our lives.
The earliest stages of learning for young children are the most important. The fundamentals of learning are instilled into a child at a very young age and how much importance is placed on these fundamentals can have dramatic effects on the future of the child’s learning and can help them in many ways.
One way that music can make learning easier for a young child is by implementing music lessons into a child’s normal activities. A small study was done a few years ago involving then three-year-olds who were tested on their ability to put together a puzzle and the speed at which they could do it. After the initial test was taken, five of the children were given singing lessons for 30 minutes a day and the other five were given piano lessons for 15 minutes a week. The lessons were conducted over a six-month period, and after the six months, all of the kids showed substantial improvement in the speed at which they could put together the puzzle. The researchers understand this skill in putting pieces of a puzzle together as the same reasoning that engineers, chess players and high-level mathematicians use. In the study of inner-city kids, the initial scores were below average, but afterwards the scores nearly doubled. The term they give to the type of reasoning and thought that goes into putting pieces of a puzzle together is called abstract reasoning. By teaching music, people exercise the same abstract reasoning skills that they use for doing math or some other exercise in which the people have to visualize in their head.
A similar study was conducted by Frances H. Rauscher(3) in which 15 preschoolers received daily singing lessons and weekly keyboard lessons, while another 4 children received no training. At the start, middle, and end of the study, the students were tested on five special reasoning tasks. After only 4 months, scores on the tests improved dramatically for the group with the musical training, while the control group didn’t, even though both groups started out with the same scores.
It can be understood that this kind of improvement may not be substantial enough to alter the way people are fundamentally taught, but its results cannot be ignored. Rauscher explains, “Music instruction can improve a child’s special intelligence for a long time, perhaps permanently.” Implementing such changes and improvements into a young child’s learning could have great effects on them in the future when dealing with the same spatial reasoning skills.
Music, when involved in the classroom, can have great effects on the early stages of learning, but it can also have significant effects on older people in a learning environment. However, music doesn’t have the same effect on adults that it has on children. It’s easily understood that for young children, getting them to do fun musical things like learning to play and instrument is something easy compared to getting an adult to do the same thing. Kids will do it because it’s something new and exciting whereas adults need to be motivated to do the same thing. They won’t do it simply because they can. For adults, it’s a matter of choice, but when they choose to involve music in their everyday lives, the effects can be just as dramatic, but different when compares with music effects on younger children.
One important aspect that music can have on learning for young people of all ages is attitude. Its seems logical to assume that it is more helpful for adults who are less likely to want to do a particular job or activity, but music can change this and give the listener a more positive attitude and motivation. Simply listening to pleasant music in the background while doing an arduous task can make it seem so much easier, or in some cases, music may not increase positive attitude, but it will ease the strain of an activity.
It has been shown over and over again that one of the strongest effects of music on the brain is in the area of memory. Students of foreign languages were shown to be able to learn hundreds of vocabulary words in one day while listening to appropriate music. What is more, they remembered the words over time at a level of 92% retention. This was accomplished with the use of baroque classical music. The tempo was the most successful at a steady rate of 60 beats per minute. At this tempo, people seem to remember the most.
Back in the 1990s, there were some that said studying while listening to Mozart actually increases your IQ, but this so called “Mozart Effect”(4) has since been disproven in many studies, and in turn studies have shown that some music has a negative effect on fact retention if you’re studying numbers or lists. Still, performing music has been proven to help with memory retention and language skills, but for listeners, its better used as a means to recall memories. It has been shown in Alzheimer’s patients to help with memory recall, and even restore cognitive function. It works for Alzheimer’s patients in the same way it works in everyone else.
So how exactly does music work in recalling memories? When you listen to music you know, it stimulates the hippocampus, which handles long-term storage in the brain. Doing so can bring out relevant memories you made by listening to a particular song. So, even though the Mozart Effect has essentially been disproven, the idea that forming a new memory with music, and then using the same music again later to recall that memory still appears to be a sound idea. It you’re having trouble remembering something, you might have better luck if you play the same music you were listening to when you first made the thought.
Recently, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords used music therapy to help her learn to talk again.(5) The still unproven theory revolves around the idea that music is represented in multiple parts of the brain and therefore accesses deeper pathways between neurons. Music then helps patients connect the stored knowledge of words through songs and helps create the new connections needed for speech. This same idea has been used for stroke victims in the past. You don’t need to have suffered from brain damage to get the benefits though.
In general, responses to music are able to be observed. It has been proven that music influences humans both in good and bad ways. These effects are instantaneous and long lasting. Music is thought to link all of the emotional, spiritual, and physical elements of the world. Music can also be used to change a person’s mood, and has been found to cause like physical responses in many people simultaneously. Music also has the ability to strengthen or weaken emotions from a particular event such as a funeral.
People perceive and respond to music in different ways. The level of musicianship(6) of the performer and the listener as well as the manner in which a piece is performed effects the “experience” of music. An experiences and accomplished musician might hear and feel a piece of music in a totally different way than a non-musician or a beginner. This is who two accounts of the same piece of music can contradict themselves.
Rhythm is also an important aspect of music to study when looking at how people respond to music. There are two responses to rhythm. These responses can be hard to separate because they’re related, and one of these responses cannot exist without the other. They are, one, the actual hearing of the rhythm and, two, the physical response to the rhythm. Rhythm organizes physical movements and is very much related to the human body. For example, the body contains rhythms in the heartbeat, while walking, during breathing, etc. Another example of how rhythm orders movements is an autistic boy who could not tie his shoes. He learned how on the second try when the task was put to a song. The rhythm helped him to organize his physical movements in time.
It cannot be proven that two people can feel the exact same thing from hearing a piece of music. For example, early missionaries in Africa thought that the nationals had bad rhythm. The missionaries said that when the nationals played their drums it sounded like they were not beating in time. However, it was later discovered that they were beating out complex polyrhythmic beats such as 2 against 3, 3 against 4, and 2 against 3 and 5, etc. These beats were too advanced for the missionaries to follow.
Responses to music are easy to be detected in the human body. Classical music from the baroque period(7) causes the heartbeat and pulse rate to relax to the beat of the music. As the body becomes relaxed and alert, the mind is able to concentrate more easily. Furthermore, baroque music decreases blood pressure and enhances the ability to learn. Music affects the amplitude and frequency of brain waves, which can be measured by an electro-encephalogram. Music also affects breathing rate and electrical resistance of the skin. It has been observed to cause the pupils to dilate, and with some music, increased blood pressure and heart rate.
Music can have positive effects on pain management. Music can help reduce both the sensation and distress of both chronic pain and postoperative pain. Music therapy is increasingly used in hospitals to reduce the need for medication during childbirth and to complement the use of anesthesia during surgery. There are several theories about how music positively affects perceived pain.
One, music serves as a distractor, taking your mind off the pain,
Two, music may give you a sense of control,
Three, music causes the body to release endorphins that counteract the pain,
And Four, slow music relaxes your body, slowing your breathing and heartbeat.
Listening to music can reduce chronic pain from a range of painful conditions, including osteoarthritis, disc problems and rheumatoid arthritis, by up to 21% and depression by up to 25%.
The idea that listening to music can boost your immune system might sound a little crazy on the surface, but science backs it up. Soothing music is known to decrease stress and when it does that, it decreases the level of the stress hormone cortisol. It’s
not just soothing music though; even upbeat dance music is known to increase the level of antibodies in your system.
When the cold season sets in, it’s a good idea to keep this in mind. If you’re
feeling stressed out or if you’re starting to feel ill, listening to music might be the extra help you need to stay well. If you’re having trouble finding something to listen to, you could also try the soothing sounds of a thunderstorm, or if you prefer the upbeat method, any fast and upbeat dance song will do the trick.
It is important to cut down on stress in our daily lives, and any way that we can do that is beneficial to our health in some way or another. In past years, there has been quite a bit of music created for the sole purpose of relaxation and the reduction of stress. The question posed by this is: Do these relaxation tracks really work better than a person’s personal preference in music or no music at all in reducing stress? One study found that all three ways worked well for relaxation and reducing tension, but listening to music proved to be a little bit more beneficial. Of both music groups, it found that the relaxation tracks were equally as good as the subject-selected music, but were no better. Musical groups such as orchestra, band or choir help to bring people together as well as improving communication skills, group work, and forming peer groups. Music creates a higher standard among people; where on a math test a grade
of 90% would be and “A”, a 90% grade on a performance would be quite bad. This study seems to suggest that music can provide a student with a level of individuality to learn his/her own style. Music education creates a much better-rounded student
that does much more and learns much easier.
You’ve probably heard before that humming a tune decreases anxiety and the same goes to prevent choking under pressure. In a study of basketball players who were prone to failing at the free throw line, researchers found that they could improve the player’s percentage if they first listened to catchy upbeat music. If you’re prone to getting anxious, worried, or choking in meetings or presentations, throwing on a humorous, light-hearted song before you go on might help distract your brain enough to keep you from failing.
Music has a positive effect on exercising. Researchers have found a positive correlation between fast paced music and exercise. While it’s not too surprising,
music works to increase exercising strength by distracting attention and pushing the heart and muscles to work at a faster pace. Not much is known about how or why it works, but it’s thought that music eases exercise.(8) The best music to listen to is between 120-140 beats per minute, which also happens to be the standard tempo for upbeat dance music, which means that you’ll be increasing your immune system and helping yourself exercise at the same time.
The effect of using music to increase productivity is still inconclusive, even though a few studies were done on the subject. Regardless, it certainly doesn’t hurt, and it seems the best option might be to use music without words so it doesn’t have effect on the language parts of the brain. The theory is similar to the exercise theory above; faster music might keep you and your brain working hard.
That being said, if you have a monotonous job, music is a great way to increase you mood while performing boring work. For the same reasoning it helps with exercise, it also helps with fighting fatigue, especially if you change up the music often. Studies have shown that almost all music improves your mood, because it causes a release of dopamine, so if you’re feeling tired, bored, or depressed, a good pop song might the cure you need. Music is a motivator and a great means to keep yourself in your good mood, and while a number of the effects are still unproven in numerous studies, studies have been done that make this look promising.
Relaxing classical music is a safe, cheap and easy way to beat insomnia. Many people who suffer from insomnia find that Bach music helps them. Researchers have shown that just 45 minutes of relaxing music before bedtime can make for a restful night. Relaxing music reduces sympathetic nervous system activity, decreases anxiety, blood pressure, heart and repertory rate, and may have positive effects on sleep via muscle relaxation and distraction from thoughts.
Tests on the effects of music on living organisms besides humans have shown that special pieces of music can aid hens in laying more eggs, and can also help cows to produce more milk. Researchers from Canada and the former Soviet Union found that wheat will grow faster when exposed to special ultrasonic and musical sounds. Rats were tested by psychologists to see how they would react to Bach’s music and to rock music. The rats were placed into two different boxes, rock music was playing in one, and Bach in the other. The rats could choose to switch boxes through a tunnel that connected both boxes. Almost all of the rats chose to go into the box with the Bach music, even after the type of music was switched from one box to the other.
Research took a new turn when in 1968 a college student named Dorthy Retallack started researching the effects of music on plants. She took her focus off of studying the beat and put it on studying the different sounds of music. Retallack tested the effects of music on plant growth by using music style including classical, jazz, pop, rock, East Indian, and country. She found that the plants grew well for almost every type of music except for rock. Jazz, classical, and the music of Ravi Shankar(9) turned out to be most helpful to the plants, while rock caused the plants to wither and die.
Returning to music’s effects on humans, not all of the effects of music on the brain are positive effects. Some types of music can cause the brain to lose its symmetry between its right and left hemispheres. We’ve all experienced this when trying to concentrate on a task while loud or otherwise disruptive music is being played. Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that this can lead to learning disabilities and behavior disruptions in children. It can likewise generate diminishing work capabilities in adults.
The types of music that cause these effects on the brain are mostly aggressive forms of music such as rap or heavy rock. The specific type of beat may be at fault. It could also be attributed to the fact that too much repetition leads to feeling of anger and hostility. To achieve positive effects of music on the brain, music must have certain attributes. It needs to be fairly complex to involve more of the brain in the activity and keep the person interested. New and different music is another factor that keeps the brain active and not bored.
Music is innate. It has been a part of human life throughout all cultures in all times and is more foundational to out species than language. Humans passionately create, listen to and dance to music. We Americans, most of whom have no particular musical talent, spend more hours daily listening to music on car radios and MP3 players, and as background in offices, homes, TV shows and movies.
Identified by Howard Gardner as one of the eight multiple intelligences (10), musical/ rhythmic intelligence is present in every human at birth. Of all the intellectual capacities none develops earlier than music. Even individuals with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities possess musical abilities and can have meaningful musical experiences.
In these days where cutbacks are always eminent in local schools, people need to struggle to keep music and the art intact. Music and the art are what make life worth living and without them people lose hold of their culture and diversity. The ideal way to learn in the future would be to fully incorporate music into the curriculum of every day school. If every school supported and encouraged their students to freely pursue music with the culture of music in their everyday lives, people would become much more efficient in their learning and would become much better students on the whole. Music is a power too great for man to comprehend at this point, but through further study man can learn how better to use music to its full potential.
“What an odd thing it is to see and entire species – billions of people – playing with, listening to, meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by when they call ‘music’” – Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (music lover)
Footnotes:(1) The primary somatosensory area in the human cortex is located in the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe. The postcentral gyrus is the location of the primary somatosensory area, the main sensory receptive area for the sense of touch. Like other sensory areas, there is a map of sensory space called a homunculus at this location. For the primary somatosensory cortex, this is called the sensory homunculus. Areas of this part of the human brain map to certain areas of the body, dependent on the amount or importance of somatosensory input from that area. For example, there is a large area of cortex devoted to sensation in the hands, while the back has a much smaller area. Somatosensory information involved with proprioception and posture also targets an entirely different part of the brain, the cerebellum.
(2) Facts about Albert Einstein from “Music And The Brain” by Laurence O’Donnell
(3) Frances Rauscher is an Endowed Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Although primarily interested in music cognition, other research interests include the role of hand gestures in speech production, the effects of environmental enrichment on animal cognition, and time perception. She teaches undergraduate courses in Human Development, Infant and Child Development, Social Psychology, and History of Psychology. She also teaches graduate seminars in Experimental Research Methods, Developmental Psychology, and Social Psychology.
(4) The “Mozart Effect” – The Mozart Effect basically states that listening to music, more specifically Mozart, actually makes you smarter and raises your IQ. This is not true because you can’t simply listen to the music and instantly know things. Listening to Mozart does not in fact raise IQ, but it can help with focus and special reasoning in both children and adults.
(5) On January 8, 2011, Giffords was shot in the head outside a Safeway grocery store in Casas Adobes, Arizona, a suburban area northwest of Tucson, during her first "Congress on Your Corner" gathering of the year. Giffords initially was placed in an induced coma to allow her brain to rest. She was able to respond to simple commands when periodically awoken, but was unable to speak as she was on a ventilator. As Giffords' status improved, by mid-January she began simple physical therapy, including sitting up with the assistance of hospital staff and moving her legs upon command. Later she underwent multiple types of therapy (physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy). She learned to speak again using music therapy. She started with simple, familiar songs such as the "Happy Birthday" song. Over time, Giffords learned to repeat ordinary phrases in a sing-songy voice. A song would gradually become a chant and finally a spoken phrase with the natural rhythm of speech.
(6) Musicianship (yes, it is a word) – Artistry in performing music.
(7) The Baroque period is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drams, tension, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance and music. This period started in Rome and Italy and soon moved to Europe around 1600.
(8) My theory on how music eases exercise- Exercise causes stress, music eases stress, listening to music while exercising eases the stress therefore easing the exercise.
(9) Ravi Shankar – Born April 7, 1920. Composer, musician, legendary sitar player.
(10) Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences - proposed by Gardner in 1983, his theory was that, instead of one general ability, intelligence is differentiated into various specific categories. The theory includes eight intelligences:
• Spatial – This area deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind’s eye.
• Linguistic – This area has to do with words, spoken or written.
• Logical/Mathematical – This area has to do with logic, abstractions, reasoning and numbers.
• Bodily/Kinesthetic – This area controls bodily motions and capacity to handle objects skillfully.
• Musical – This area has to do with sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music.
• Interpersonal – This area has to do with interaction with others.
• Intrapersonal – This area has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities.
• Naturalistic – This area has to do with nurturing and relating to one’s natural surroundings.
Gardner also considered existential and moral intelligence to be worthy inclusions:
• Existential – Some proponents of multiple intelligence theory proposed spiritual or religious intelligence. This deals with the ability to contemplate phenomena or questions beyond sensory data. (Includes priests, mathematicians, physicists, scientists, and philosophers)
The theory has been met with mixed responses. Traditional intelligence tests have generally found high correlations between different tasks and aspects of intelligence, rather than the low correlations which Gardner’s theory predicts. Nevertheless, many educationalists support the practical value of the approaches suggested by the theory.
