Neuroscientists have developed methods to track how different stimuli affect brain function over the past decades. Neuroscientists have discovered ways to monitor how different stimuli affect the brain. When neurons process a new sense, such as touch, sight, or sound, they fire electrical impulses that send microscopic messages between each other. Scientists can now see how music affects the brain and use emerging technology to watch the brain process sound.
Research began to study how music affects everyday life and its effects on the brain.
The Benefits of Learning Music
Listening vs. Playing
The brain activates uniquely when a person listens to or practices music. Music activates the brain in unique ways. It sets off “fireworks” that allow listeners to quickly decode each piece of music (melody, rhythm etc.). You can then combine it again to make the song complete. However, studies have shown that practicing or playing music is more complex than a full-body workout.
Other activities like sports and the arts trigger specific brain parts, but music triggers all those cortexes and more throughout your brain. Students who are disciplined in their music practice can gradually strengthen various brain areas, improving their musical skills, academic studies, and social interactions.
Strengthening your Brain: Problem-Solving
Fine motor skills are required to play music. This combines the left and right halves and creates a bridge between them. The brain’s left hemisphere is responsible for linguistic and mathematical precision. While the right hemisphere deals with original and novel content, creativity and innovation, the right hemisphere is responsible for both. The Corpus Callosum, the small brain area connecting the two hemispheres, allows messages to travel faster and more complexly through the brain by playing an instrument. Musicians can solve problems in various environments with greater ease, creativity, and efficiency.
Memory – Strengthening the brain:
It takes cognitive and emotional insight to play complex pieces of music. A musician or conductor must not only pay attention to details but also feel the song’s emotional content. Scientists believe that musicians are better at remembering than other people because they can store and retrieve memories faster.
Case Study
The Journal of Neuroscience found that practicing music is more than just learning an instrument. The Harmony Project, a non-profit organization, founded by Margaret Martin, offers children from low-income neighborhoods the chance to learn music from its instructors. Martin was intrigued by the impact music had on the children who participated in the program. Nina Kraus, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, came to the rescue. The pair noticed two patterns: children who had been practicing an instrument for at least 2 years had significant improvement. Some even enrolled at well-known colleges like Tulane, Dartmouth, and NYU.
Like the Harmony Project’s children, children who grow up in poverty experience something special. These children often hear fewer words than the average child by five. Their nervous systems then create substitute stimulation to replace the loss of sound. This sounds like background noise, a kind of mental static. Kraus refers to this “neural noise” as it causes problems for the brain in processing subtle differences in speech. Kraus was able to see improvements in pitch, timing, and timbre processing when Kraus examined the brainwaves of children who had been playing music for at least two years.