Listening to music has become a part of the everyday lives of many people worldwide. It is used while studying, exercising, driving, walking, and so many other activities to help us escape reality for a little while. What we do not consciously realize are the cognitive functions that take place when we listen to music. Simple frequencies are combined or overlapped to make beautiful harmonies and melodies which our mind is not only able to understand, but also invoke feelings and memories. I find these aspects to truly showcase the beauty of the human mind and powerful it is.
What Happens to our Mind When We Listen to Music?
Listening to music involves cognitive processes that take place within the mind that one may not be consciously aware of. The process starts off with a sound system – speaker, headphones, or others – that put out vibrations that travel through the air and into the ear canal. The eardrum is tickled by these vibrations and converts them into electrical signals that travel through the auditory nerve and into the brain. It is here where our brain finally perceives what we call music. The first step our brain does when it perceives music is to trigger the pleasure center, which releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This neurotransmitter helps a person feel good or happy. Using an MRI is a common method to see what part of the brain is active when doing a certain activity, researchers have found that when listening to music, it activates different parts of the brain that handle different aspects of the music, such as rhythm, tone, and dynamics, and parts of the brain that deal with emotions are also activated when listening to music.
How is it Beneficial?
Listening to music has a wide range of benefits such as reduced anxiety, blood pressure, pain, as well as improved sleep quality (depending on what you listen to before bed), mood, mental alertness, and memory. It also helps improvecognitive and motor skills, spatial-temporal learning, and neurogenesis, which is the ability of the brain to produce neurons.
Recently, music has been used extensively with patients of Alzheimer. In a study done by the University of Central Florida, it was found that in the late stages of Alzheimer patients, their eyes would light up when they were given headphones that played their favorite music and would even move and sing along with the effect, lasting minutes after the music was turned off.
Music therapy is another aspect that involves the clinical use of music interventions to accomplish goals that are set within a therapeutic relationship – music therapy requires a credentialed professional. It is able to achieve a variety of goals such as wellness, managing stress, improving communication, expressing feelings, and enhancing memory. Music therapy is also used to improve Parkinson Disease (PD) symptoms. A technique known as rhythmic auditory cueing is used, in which rhythm is used to facilitate movement and improve gait.