The Neuroscience of Music
One could approach any random stranger on the street and ask for a favorite song of theirs; they’d have it in a few seconds. Everyone knows the tingling feeling that rushes down your spine when your favorite part of a song comes up. And yet, I seriously doubt anyone would be able to explain how they recognize these things so candidly, or why their mind is so responsive to the phenomenon of music. The field of neuroscience as it relates to music has only just begun to be explored, and it’s growing fast. Music has no biological basis in our evolution (Petr, “Jazzing Up Neuroscience”), and until very recently has been given little thought. The truth of it is, though, music the way we see it goes far deeper into the way it effects our innermost thoughts than most of us realize. Dancing and moving to music, the sensations during melodic verses, even our ability to recall lyrics and tunes with incredible accuracy...it all ties back to the biochemistry in our brain. Modern science shows that music can reach out into our minds as far as memory, emotions, and of course auditory and motor functions, though most people would be surprised at just how gripping and entire the effects on these aspects of our brain can be.
Part of the reason radio jingles and music in the background of commercials make modern advertising so successful is because of the strong bond between music and memory. People’s ability to recall lyrics in a snap, hum show tunes they heard in a window display as they walk down the street, and even performing music the way we do roots from that music being firmly planted in our memories. 8 years ago there was a news article in the New York Times that looked into this relationship a bit, including a r...
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...ing...”). Music is known to increase performance rates for many perceptual and cognitive tasks (Reck, Ovary, “Preface...”), but only recently has it been observed to literally transform our brain, as far as what we use to hear and process it. What music training and music therapy do is use music to tone auditory skills through listening exercises and in many cases be put to use to help with psychological issues such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia and central auditory processing disorders (Kraus et. al.). Through this process, however, the brain’s fundamental structure often changes or adapts itself to the circumstances of exercising auditory components in our brain. These capabilities are both radical and rare, but are scientifically proven. Music has the ability to influence our fine motor skills, coordinated movement, and also fundamentally alter our auditory functions.
Whether you’re a devoted music enthusiast or you just listen to the radio to pass time, we all listen to music. However, when listening to music, nobody stops to think about what they are doing. Nobody stops to contemplate how the music they are listening to affects them psychologically. We just listen to the music and enjoy ourselves. In fact however, a great deal of research has been done to determine the psychophysiological effects of music. Many studies have been conducted to determine whether music can help people who suffer from psychological and medical disorders, Scholars continually debate whether music can influence behavior, and researchers are attempting to understand what is happening in our brain when we listen to music.
Music and the Brain: Processing and Responding (A General Overview). For any individual who either avidly listens to or performs music, it is understood that many melodies have amazing effects on both our emotions and our perception. To address the effects of music on the brain, it seems most logical to initially map the auditory and neural pathways of sound. In the case of humans, the mechanism responsible for receiving and transmitting sound to the brain is the ears.
This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin, Chapter 8
But as long as the note is in the right context, it sounds fine. As humans, we have grown to develop a sort of musical grammar in detecting a wrong note. We develop an awareness to the knowledge of the rules of how certain sequences are made, very much like grammar with linguistics. Now, musical grammar can be a lot more complex than just a sour note, and can greatly differ depending on the culture you were raised in. And just as with language, this grammar has to be learned. The evidence being that infants don’t seem to be sensitive to this (21).
Episodic memory is a conscious process: Music evokes memories and so also evokes the emotions associated with these memories. Although this discussion of the memory processes is compelling, it is incomplete because it excludes mentioning the circumstances where music is explicitly associated with narrative content that independently evokes emotional responses e.g. music accompanied by lyrics that tell a story which evokes the story’s emotion message. However, their main focus is on circumstances where music is associated with the narrative content of film (Juslin, P.N. and Vastfjall D., 2008, p.578).
Music has become increasingly popular in today’s society. When we are listening to music, our brain does much more than just process the sound. Music has been known to be able to affect human emotions and moods. The brain first categorizes sound into music through interactions between the low-level and high-level processing units (“How Our Brains Process Music”). The whole task begins with the auditory cortex in the brain which first receives a signal from the eardrum which in turn activates the cerebellum (“How Our Brains Process Music”). The cerebellum is the part of the brain that assists in coordination, precision, and timing of movement (“How Our Brains Process Music”). The ear and the cerebellum together as the low-level processing units allow the brain to start analyzing the sounds and break down the auditory stimulus into pitch, amplitude, timing of different notes, etc (“How Our Brains Process Music”).
: The question most commonly asked within the music industry is: why does the human brain pick up on certain sounds and find them appealing? Song contain rhythm, often found in poetry, that paints a picture within one's brain the same way a poem would. Every melody comes to life using a series of different words infused with such detail the audience visually connects to the story. Phrases within songs and poems often symbolize a greater meaning allowing the audience to understand the analogy. Poems contain certain sounds that appeal the a large audience- simply melodies and calm rhythm versus heavy beats and deep vibrations.
Weir, Kirsten, and Debbie Nevins. "Music And Your Mind.. (Cover Story)." Current Health Kids 34.1 (2010): 10-12. Health Source - Consumer Edition. Web. 9 Jan. 2012.
Levetin, D. "This is your brain on music." The science of a human obsession. David Levetin, n.d. Web. April 2011. .
Schlaug, Gottfried, Andrea Norton, Kate Overy, and Ellen Winner. Effects of Music Training on the Child’s Brain. The Musician's Brain. New York Academy Of Sciences, 2005. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. .
When we listen to music a number of things occur: we process sound through the auditory complex, an artist’s movement through the visual cortex, dancing and other rhythmical movement through the cerebellum. The Motor Cortex also enables movement such as foot tapping or hand clapping. Our Hippocampus stores our experiences through music and enables musicians to remember musical pieces. Finally, the Amygdala allows for emotional reactions to music. Because music is a combination of our different senses, we as individuals can process things differently and naturally we will like some genres more than others. Music is one of th...
Music and the Brain. (n.d.). Music and the Brain. Retrieved April 25, 2014, from http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/research/highlights/rh-music-and-brain-2011.html
We have different emotions that we have experience daily. Some people used to listen to music in order to contract emotions. The precise structure through which music evokes emotions is a rich field of research, with a great amount of not explained questions. Why does music talk to our emotional brain? Why do we perceive emotional information in musical features? Why do we feel the urge to move when hearing music? Through increasing scientific understanding of the universal as well as the individual principles behind music-evoked emotions, we will be able to better understand the effects that music-listening can have and make better use of them in an informed
Cooper, Belle. " How Music Affects and Benefits Your Brain."lifehacker.come. N.p., 11 22 2013. Web. 3
Music has incredible effects on the brain and body! Ever since the beginning of time, music has been around. It can influence the way a person thinks and behaves, and also social interactions. Teens are more susceptible to this (Revatto 1). Music can be used in therapy by helping people with depression, and can even be a more natural way to heal the body (“How Music...” 1). In some cases, songs and melodies can help or make diseases worse. Music is a powerful thing and can affect your brain and many other things in your body in numerous ways.