Music makes you smarter. It’s like a super vitamin for you brain. Research has proved that listening to music gives it an exercise but being musically trained gives the brain a whole upgrade. Your body also gets some status buffs too, not to mention the ability to play an instrument and to sing more in tune. Overall, it just makes life somewhat easier in the long run.

Music is something all of us have experienced. As children our parents would sing lullabies to sleep, or we would listen to the radio in the car, playing the same “hit” songs that have played everywhere for the past month. Even for those who are hard of hearing, music can be experienced through vibrations where the rhythm of music can be felt. In a sense, music is everywhere. The sound of speech has tone, pitch, timbre (the character of the sound that distinguishes certain instruments from others), and rhythm. We listen to these sounds so often that we don’t pay attention to these details, much less even think about them. As easy as it seems, our brains are constantly splitting the sounds into their most basic forms, sound waves, analyzing them, then putting them back together to deliver to us what we perceive as music.

Every time we listen to music, or anything like it, we exercise our brains. Specifically, our right brain, which controls creativity, intuition, and artistic ability.Though just listening to music exercises our brains, learning how to make music builds the brain even more. It connects the two hemispheres of the brain by building more neurons between them, greatly strengthening the corpus callosum (the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres). This allows for the two sides to send signals to each other with more efficiency, and less time. This boosts creativity, motor coordination, and general processing speeds. According to research done by The National Institutes of Health and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts , children who are learning the art of music have better language skills, attention span, visuospatial perception, and executive functions than that of those who have no musical inclination. Those who have gone under musical training early in life also experience a long-term anxiolytic effect, which means that they are more resistant to anxiety, thus improving emotional health and focus, and preventing mental disorders like depression and anxiety, making them  more mentally resilient. Today, being creative, focused, and resilient, are important traits that are needed in the workforce. We need creative minds to help innovate and invent new technology, to make us even more advanced as a species, and maybe put humans on Mars, or maybe even Titan, one of Jupiter’s moon that has water on it. We need focused individuals to get the job done, to reach deadlines, and to be as efficient as possible. We need resilient people to be able to work under high stress environments, people who can grit their teeth through the whirlwind of struggles and strife and still reach goals and complete projects.

In adults the effect of listening to music is still pretty much the same to their younger counterparts. However, the effects of musical training on the adult brain is dependent on how early musical training was started. For example, the development of certain areas of the brain that are strengthened in musical training are stronger in those who have started training at a very young age compared to those who have started during their teenage years. Still, it is definite that the parts of the brain that controls music are tightly intertwined with the Wernicke’s and Broca’s area of the brain, the areas that control speech and comprehension. Training these parts also prevent age from effecting speech and comprehension abilities.

These are not the only areas that music effect. According to Aniruddh D. Patel’s research, the areas that control musical creativity are also connected to the brain’s reward system. This causes the brain to have improved adaptive neural plasticity, which means it is easier for individuals to learn something new, retain information, manipulate knowledge, and to be creative.

Music therapy has shown to be effective in helping pediatric cancer patients deal with the distress of acute treatment, pain, anxiety, and cognitive results. Music therapy consists of music composition, replication through voice or instruments, improvisation, and discussion of music itself. In adults, music can be used to help individuals battle addiction. Music can induce some strong physical and emotional responses, that some drugs are used to artificially and unhealthily induce on the user. Thus, music can help wean addicts off their addiction. For depression, studies have shown that improvisational music therapy was more effective than standard care. Another study shows that singing, whether in a choir or the shower, lowers adrenocorticotropic levels, lowering stress and arousal. This also results in lower blood pressure, and the chances of heart disease. Music also has connection to parts of the brain that control our sense of pain. Basically, being well versed in playing a musical instrument can heighten pain tolerance.

In elders, it is proven that those who have undergone at least ten years of musical training have better executive functions and nonverbal memory compared to their non-musical counterparts. It keeps elders sharp. Also, it helps combat ageing associated mental diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Music can also help restore brain functions. Almost 800,000 people have a stroke in the United States every year. After a stroke, many lose the ability to speak properly. It is shown that stroke survivors who have gone through Melodic Intonation Therapy have displayed significant progress in recovery. Melodic Intonation Therapy involves deriving the melodies from works of music and relating it to spoken language. There are numerous benefits to these music therapies, all of which are non-invasive. It improves respiratory control, because singing music requires knowledge of when to breathe. Same with instrumental music, the melody is rarely ever one long string of notes, there are always parts and different ideas and motifs. Quality of life is improved because music can evoke many different emotions, giving elders a great source of entertainment. Gait is also improved, as learning rhythms help elders pace their steps, helping their balance. Swallowing and muscle control is also improved, as singing and neural connections are improved through music therapy.

Being able to make music may not create geniuses, but it would benefit one’s IQ. It won’t create martial arts masters, but it will make people more coordinated. Overall, it would just make more well-rounded people, mentally and physically. Maybe one day in the future, someone will begin humming a tune, and everyone, having been trained in music, will harmonize along, and exercise their brains together.

By: J. Chang

References

Aniruddh D. Patel, (2013, August 11). Can nonlinguistic musical training change the way the brain processes speech? The expanded OPERA hypothesis. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2013.08.011

Laws, E. R. (2010, May). Music and the Brain. World Neurosurgery, 73(5), 458–458. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2010.03.004

Oudyk, K., Burunat, I., Brattico, E., & Toiviainen, P. (2019, May 27). Personality modulates brain responses to emotion in music: Comparing whole-brain and regions-of-variance approaches. Www.biorxiv.org. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/651133

Thomas Cheever, Anna Taylor, Robert Finkelstein, Emmeline Edwards, Laura Thomas, Joke Bradt, Steven J. Holochwost, Julene K. Johnson, Charles Limb, Aniruddh D. Patel, Nim Tottenham, Sunil lyengar, Deborah Rutter, Renée Fleming, Francis S. Collins(2018, March 21). NIH/Kennedy Center Workshop on Music and the Brain: Finding Harmony. Neuron. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2018.02.004

Image Credits

Beatriz Gascon J Dancing Brain https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/dancing-brain-249761113

VectorMine Aphasia vector illustration. Labeled educational scheme with brain neuron disorder. Medical problem with writing, reading and repetition inability. List with illness location, structure and effects. http://shutterstock.puzzlepix.hu/kep/1341923291