By Dr. Mercola
If you’re a music lover, you already know that turning on the
tunes can help calm your nerves, make stress disappear, pump up
your energy level during a workout, bring back old memories, as
well as prompt countless other emotions too varied to list.
Even if you’re not a music aficionado, per se, there are
compelling reasons why you may want to become one, which were
recently revealed by a series of new research.
Music Prompts Numerous Brain Changes Linked to Emotions and
Abstract Decision Making
When you listen to music, much more is happening in your body
than simple auditory processing. Music triggers activity in the
nucleus accumbens, a part of your brain that releases the
feel-good chemical dopamine and is involved in forming
expectations.
At the same time, the amygdala, which is involved in
processing emotion, and the prefrontal cortex, which makes
possible abstract decision-making, are also activated, according
to new research published in the journal Science.1
Based on the brain activity in certain regions, especially
the nucleus accumbens, captured by an fMRI imager while
participants listened to music, the researchers could predict
how much money the listeners were willing to spend on previously
unheard music. As you might suspect, songs that triggered
activity in the emotional and intellectual areas of the brain
demanded a higher price.
Interestingly, the study’s lead author noted that your brain
learns how to predict how different pieces of music will unfold
using pattern recognition and prediction, skills that may have
been key to our evolutionary progress. Time reported:2
“These predictions are culture-dependent and based on
experience: someone raised on rock or Western classical
music won’t be able to predict the course of an Indian raga,
for example, and vice versa.
But if a piece develops in a way that’s both slightly
novel and still in line with our brain’s prediction, we tend
to like it a lot. And that, says [lead researcher]
Salimpoor, ‘is because we’ve made a kind of intellectual
conquest.’
Music may, in other words, tap into a brain mechanism
that was key to our evolutionary progress. The ability to
recognize patterns and generalize from experience, to
predict what’s likely to happen in the future — in short,
the ability to imagine — is something humans do far better
than any other animals. It’s what allowed us (aided by the
far less glamorous opposable thumb) to take over the world.”
Why Music Makes Us Feel United
So far we’ve covered that music is involved in both emotional
and intellectual centers of your brain, but music also has an,
almost uncanny, ability to connect us to one another.
Separate research published this month showed one reason for
why this might be. When listening to four pieces of classical
music they had never heard before, study participants’ brains
reacted in much the same way. Areas of the brain involved in
movement planning, memory and attention all had similar
activation patterns when the participants listened to the same
music, which suggests we may each experience music in similar
ways.
The study’s lead author noted:3
"We spend a lot of time listening to music -- often
in groups, and often in conjunction with synchronized
movement and dance … Here, we've shown for the first time
that despite our individual differences in musical
experiences and preferences, classical music elicits a
highly consistent pattern of activity across individuals in
several brain structures including those involved in
movement planning, memory and attention."
Co-author Daniel Levitin, PhD, expanded:4
"It's not our natural tendency to thrust ourselves
into a crowd of 20,000 people, but for a Muse concert or a
Radiohead concert we'll do it … There's this unifying force
that comes from the music, and we don't get that from other
things."
Music Relieves Anxiety Better Than Drugs and Benefits Premature
Babies
If you want a more concrete example of music’s powers, a
meta-analysis by Levitin and colleagues found some striking
benefits of music after reviewing 400 studies.5
Among the data was one study that revealed listening to music
resulted in less anxiety and lower cortisol levels among
patients about to undergo surgery than taking anti-anxiety
drugs. Other evidence showed music has an impact on antibodies
linked to immunity and may lead to higher levels of
bacteria-fighting immune cells.
Still more research revealed that playing music in the
neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) improved the health of
premature babies with respiratory distress or sepsis.6
When parents sang to their babies, or sounds mimicking those in
the womb were played, numerous benefits occurred, including
changes in heart rates, sucking behavior and parents’ stress
levels. The researchers noted:
“Entrained with a premature infant’s observed vital
signs, sound and lullaby may improve feeding behaviors and
sucking patterns and may increase prolonged periods of
quiet–alert states. Parent-preferred lullabies, sung live,
can enhance bonding, thus decreasing the stress parents
associate with premature infant care.”
Taken together, the latest research makes a strong case for
using music as a therapeutic tool for babies and adults alike.
Why Music Should be a Part of Your Workouts, Too
Many people instinctively don a headset linked to their
favorite music when hitting the gym, which makes sense since
certain types of music can motivate you to run faster, or keep
going even though you're fatigued, giving you a better workout.
Additionally, research has shown that listening to music while
exercising boosted cognitive levels and verbal fluency skills in
people diagnosed with coronary artery disease (coronary artery
disease has been linked to a decline in cognitive abilities).
Signs of improvement in verbal fluency areas more than
doubled after listening to music compared to that of
the non-music session.7
Listening to music while exercising can also improve your
performance, increasing your endurance by 15 percent,8
and your movement will likely follow the tempo of the song. For
instance, in one study when the music's tempo slowed, the
subjects' exertion level reduced as well.9
And when the tempo was increased, their performance followed
suit.
Your body may be simply responding to the beat on a more or
less subconscious level, but the type and tempo of the music you
choose while working out may also influence your conscious
motivation.
What Music Is Best?
When a song gets you energized and rearing to go, you'll know
it, and these are the types of songs you probably naturally add
to your workout playlist. For that matter, when a song makes
you feel relaxed, eases your anxiety or pain levels, or boosts
your mood, you’ll know it too, as selecting music is a highly
personal – and highly intuitive – process. In other words, only
you know the “best” music for you, and that will inevitably
change – not only day to day with your mood but also over time
with the different chapters of your life.
For now, technology has given us a simple way to harness the
power of music by allowing you to create different playlists for
exercising, relaxing, working and other important aspects of
your day so you can instantly access the right music for your
mood or activity. You can also listen to music over Internet
radio using free services like Pandora, which will actually
create stations for you based on your musical tastes.
However, my favorite music source is Spotify, which I believe
is the new model for listening to music. Rather than purchase
music in iTunes or CDs prior to that, you simply rent it.
Spotify has access to over 16 million songs and most likely has
well over 95% of the music you would ever listen to. For $10 a
month you can play all of your favorite music on your phone,
tablet, computer or home stereo system. They even have
high-quality bitrates at no extra charge. I have been using them
for about a year and am very pleased.
Whatever method you choose, making music part of your
lifestyle is a simple yet powerful way to enhance your health
and your life.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.