The Effects Of Music On The Brain

 

Music has a big effect on our brains functionality with us even realising it. Throughout the years there has been many studies of different theories of how different types of music or exposures to music have affected the brain and improved its spatial-temporal reasoning. 

    The Mozart effect has been a big discussion over the years of whether or not his music has proven to enhance the brains functionality. When this theory first came around back in 1991 it started to be trialed by Frances H. Rauscher in 1993 at the University of California, Irvine. Rauschers (1994) outcome of his study was that people who were exposed to a Mozart sonata for roughly 10 minutes experienced a short term enhancement of their brains cognitive functions compared to subjects who either listened to a self-hypnosis track or nothing at all. As compelling as these results were there was still speculation of whether or not specifically Mozarts music had an impact on the brains functionality. “In 2006 a large study was conducted in Britain involving eight thousand children. They listened either to ten minutes of Mozart’s String Quintet in D Major, a discussion about the experiment or to a sequence of three pop songs.” (Hammond 2013). But the difference of this outcome compared to the original Mozart effect studies is that the children who listened to the pop music seemed to have a better increased spatial-temporal reasoning than the children who listened to Mozart.

   

    The human brains wave patterns are split up into four different categories and when lowered or raised to a certain frequency or wave category it can alter how your brain functions. When our brain falls into the Alpha category, which is the 8 – 13.9 Hz frequency range, we are allowed to obtain information better and perform more complex tasks. “Part of this is because being the slightly decreased electrical activity in the brain can lead to significant increases in feel-good brain chemicals like endorphins, noroepinephrine and dopamine.” (Greenfield). This is why there isn’t necessary a right or wrong conclusion of whether the Mozart effect works or not because in certain sense it all depends on the certain type of music you listen to and at what frequency it is matching your brain to. “In one study, listening to the Mozart sonata K448 for 10 minutes, in contrast to listening to a short story, resulted in enhanced synchrony of the firing pattern of the right frontal and left temporoparietal areas of the brain,” (Jenkins 2001). The effects music has on the brain comes down to what music you listen to and how you’re obtaining it. Deane says that by listening to music can increase the amount of dopamine in your brain or if you perform live music with others your oxytocin hormone is increased.

   

     The effects of music on the human brain are shown to be beneficial to our performance of different tasks depending on what kind of music we listen to and how you may obtain it either through casual listening, performing, or maybe a live concert. These facts above help to prove that music helps change frequencies of the brain which increase the amount of chemicals that is released into the body to help improve of performance for certain tasks.

 

 

Deane, A. How Music Affects the Brain. Be Brain Fit. https://bebrainfit.com/music-brain/ (accessed 26 March 2018).

Greenfield, B. How You Can Use Sound And Music To Change Your Brain Waves With Laser Accuracy And Achieve Huge Focus And Performance Gains. Ben Greenfield Fitness. https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/brain-podcasts/how-you-can-use-sound-and-music-to-change-your-brain-waves-with-laser-accuracy-and-achieve-huge-focus-and-performance-gains/ (accessed 26 March 2018).

Hammond, C. 2013. Does Listening to Mozart really boos your brainpower?. BBC, 8 January http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130107-can-mozart-boost-brainpower (accessed 26 March 2018).

Jenkins, J S. 2001. The Mozart Effect. Journal Of The Royal Of Medicine. aprilhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014107680109400404 (accessed 26 March 2018).

Rauscher, F. H. 1994. Music and spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship. Eric Institute of Education Sciences, August 13 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED390733.pdf (accessed 26 March 2018).