Contents:
- Medical Video: How music affects your brain
- What are the effects of music on brain performance?
- 1. Music triggers brain development
- 2. Helps the brain think more creatively
- 3. Helps learn new languages
- 4. Triggers distraction
- 5. Helps remember
Medical Video: How music affects your brain
Just like any other sound, music received by the ear will be processed by the brain to produce certain perceptions. But not only that, a series of tones from music can also influence how the brain works and responds to stimuli, both from outside and inside the body.
The phenomenon of how music can affect the human brain has been studied for a long time. You may not realize it, but it requires mutual cooperation from various parts of the brain to recognize and assemble the sound received when we listen to music.
What are the effects of music on brain performance?
Here are some ways music can affect the brain:
1. Music triggers brain development
At birth, a baby's brain is not the same as in an adult's brain. The brain will experience a process of differentiation during childhood. This process occurs by recognizing the surrounding environment, especially recognizing certain sounds, speech, and tones.
A study by Nina Kraus published on the Live Science website shows that people who practice playing musical instruments can respond to sound and language better. They will also tend to experience a slower process of brain aging. In another study, Kraus also found that practicing musical instruments can improve a person's ability to hear in a noisy atmosphere, and recognize the emotional aspects of a speech.
2. Helps the brain think more creatively
Every time you listen to new music, your brain forms a new small structure based on a series of tones that are heard. The process also helps to shape new ways of thinking.
Another interesting fact is, if we diligently follow music trends or listen to new music, this can increase creativity.
Indeed, many people, especially those who are no longer young, who prefer to listen to songs from their youth compared to new songs that are trending. These new songs may not be very pleasant to hear because our brains are not used to these tones, but routinely listening to new music can actually encourage the brain to understand new things.
3. Helps learn new languages
A series of tones from music gives rise to responses similar to language. Both tone and language are stored in the structure of the brain associated with the process of motivation, rewardand emotions.
Learning the language of certain song lyrics that use languages other than our mother tongue, will make the brain more quickly remember and predict the sentence structure and the language used in the song. In this way, the language is processed and remembered along with the tone, in the cerebrum and amygdalla, not in the frontal lobe that is used to memorize or remember.
4. Triggers distraction
Distraction occurs when the brain does not respond to a stimulus normally. This is certainly useful if we want to avoid stimuli that make us stop doing activities, for example when we are exercising.
When exercising, the most frequent stimulus is fatigue that the body sends to the brain, which gives the command to stop and rest. By listening to music, the brain will process the received sound more than focusing on fatigue. But this method may only be effective for mild exercise activities with repetitive movements, and does not cause pain,
To produce effective distraction effects, listen to the type of music that makes you motivated. Choose music with a medium tempo but not too fast and not too noisy, with an intensity of around 145 bpm. Tempo medium is more easily adapted to brain waves, because the brain can still process information from sound. Whereas if it is too fast and too noisy, the brain cannot process information and will not make the brain more motivated.
5. Helps remember
Music can trigger the brain's work in exploring information that someone remembers. It is still unknown how the mechanism actually occurs, but there is a theory that it is similar to the phenomenon of synesthesia in which a person's brain raises perceptions in the form of images and emotions when hearing a music or song.
Based on the results of several studies, the researchers also agreed that a series of tones can help patients with dementia disorders or brain trauma to remember better.
