How Does Music Affect Your Brain?

It wakes us up and motivates our workouts to keep us company on our commutes.

Doesn't matter what kind of music it is the music itself has the ability to affect our moods and our bodies in all sorts of ways.

Music activates every area of the brain that we have so far mapped in fact there's no area of the brain that we know about that music doesn't touch in some way, but what's behind all that what exactly does music do to us?

25 years ago, the idea was that language is on the left side of the brain and music is on the right side of the brain but now that we've got better quality tools higher resolution neuroimaging, and better experimental methods, it is found that music is going on in both halves of the brain the left and the right, the front in the back the inside and the outside.

The multitasking areas of their brain are understandably lit up. Not only that, they had had benefits in cognitive skills and decision-making, & also for social behavior.

Kids who have studied music have stronger connections between the right and the left hemisphere and that can make them better problem-solvers.

What we know about the brain is that the left hemisphere controls language and there are many other parts of the brain that have music access. 

Music Therapist, Meghan Morrow says sometimes she compares it to being in traffic and one can't move any further but one might need to exit so they can take a feeder road to get to their destination so music is basically like that feeder road to the new destination like a detour.

Therefore, music can help to relearn things like a speech by accessing alternative pathways in the brain, and learning to play music can help strengthen brain connections.

A musician, Fantastic Negrito was made to play one of his songs while going through fMRI; the result was the areas that process sensory and motor skills along sounds lit up.

But when he was asked to create something original, the areas that were active before, the ones that deal with motor skills and sounds are even more active.

As we could see more of the area of the prefrontal cortex which is associated with effortful planning and conscious self-monitoring is less active, it appears to be really shut down in these moments of high creativity like letting go of this conscious self-censoring or self-monitoring area that are normally there to help control that output.

Music is so much more than notes on a page. It can change the way we think and speak and feel.

It's not the thing that happens in clubs and jazz bars, it's actually maybe the most fundamental form of what it means to be human to come up with a new idea.

It's about more than just letting go. One can view it from the perspective of survival if human beings only could memorize rote responses we'd be long gone.

Life without music is inconceivable for me. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. I get the most joy in life out of music. ~ Eistein

Drop your favorite musician's name and tell us how they helped you and what position they hold in your heart.

You can find me at @saoirseblr.

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