How Music Affects The Brain

Of the 1.5 million Americans who sustain brain damage each year, roughly 90,000 of them will be left with a long term movement or speech disability. Language and the ability to create a conversation is located on the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain houses music and melody interpretation. Intriguingly, when music tones are registered, the sound engages multiple sections in both sides of the brain that overlap. One such part being the hippocampus, which consolidates short term memory into long term memory. This allows memories, emotions, and attitudes associated with a certain piece of music to service when listened to; this increase in brain activity is important for brain recovery. Therefore, music treatment can be done to stimulate these certain parts of the brain that are damaged. Music has the ability to cure a person who has brain damage from any illnesses.

Listening to music has an additional effect, since pleasurable music releases dopamine that simply makes certain parts of your brain function more efficiently, particularly the parts

Studies in neuroscience have also discovered that music is able to aid those who have only a partial ability to see or speak. Patients with damage to the left side of their brain suffer from a lack of ability to converse. However, as music stimulates the right side, patients with speech difficulties have been known to communicate through song according to Gottfried Schlaug, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University agrees that the power music has for recovery is huge; “When people first learn to talk and when they talk to babies they often use musical patterns in their speech”. With help from people, where your brain is trained to move from left to right functions across, patients can regain their full speech