Music Has Powerful (and Visible) Effects on the Brain
It doesn’t matter if it’s Bach, the Beatles, Brad Paisley or Bruno Mars. Your favorite music likely triggers a similar type of activity in your brain as other people’s favorites do in theirs.
That’s one of the things Jonathan Burdette, M.D., has found in researching music’s effects on the brain.
“Music is primal. It affects all of us, but in very personal, unique ways,” said Burdette, a neuroradiologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “Your interaction with music is different than mine, but it’s still powerful.
“Your brain has a reaction when you like or don’t like something, including music. We’ve been able to take some baby steps into seeing that, and ‘dislike’ looks different than ‘like’ and much different than ‘favorite.’”
To study how music preferences might affect functional brain connectivity – the interactions among separate areas of the brain – Burdette and his fellow investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which depicts brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. Scans were made of 21 people while they listened to music they said they most liked and disliked from among five genres (classical, country, rap, rock and Chinese opera) and to a song or piece of music they had previously named as their personal favorite.
Those fMRI scans showed a consistent pattern: The listeners’ preferences, not the type of music they were listening to, had the greatest impact on brain connectivity – especially on a brain circuit known to be involved in internally focused thought, empathy and self-awareness. This circuit, called the default mode network, was poorly connected when the participants were listening to the music they disliked, better connected when listening to the music they liked and the most connected when listening to their favorites.
The researchers also found that listening to favorite songs altered the connectivity between auditory brain areas and a region responsible for memory and social emotion consolidation.
Source & further reading:
http://www.newswise.com/articles/music-has-powerful-and-visible-effects-on-the-brain
#neuroscience #music #functionalconnectivity #brainactivity #neuroimaging
Interesting article, to complete the study it would be interesting for researchers to check if there is really a correlation between the tempo of the music, the bpm, and its effects on the quietness or the awareness of the listeners. It's commonly thought among the amateurs of electronic music, which can be felt as impersonal for somes, that it's the bpm rate which counts most: e.g. if the bpm is around 60 bpm, the cardiac rate at rest, the music is soothing, at 80 bpm, the cardiac rate when you're fully awake, the music increases your attention and improves your efficiency, while at higher rates, until 120 bpm, don't even think to work, just go to the Club...
ReplyDeleteSometimes it can really bring out your emotions, even if you do not understand the words, a happy or sad song can transcend languages and cultures. It goes to show we are fundamentally the same - intolerance, racism and prejudices can be taught to us, indoctrinated even, or shaped by bad experiences, not built in to our core psyche.
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