Music and the Positive Effects It Has on the Brain
Music is a means of communication where a person or group of people brings others into their world by communicating ideas, emotions, feelings, or inspiration and puts rhythm or melody into it. Inspiration can come from many sources such as personal experience with someone or something, with the surrounding, with one’s community, culture, country or experience/revelation/ inspiration with or from the Supreme Being. Music is meant to bring people into the singer’s world and praise/worship with him/her, understand one’s culture or communicate a message about love, nature, peace, patience, generosity among others (Oakes & North, 2006). Music therefore influences people both positively and negatively. Positive effects that music has on human brain are:
Music Brings Back People’s Vision
Music can be used as an important element of rehabilitation for stroke patients. According to a research, 60% of people who have stroke have their vision areas of the brain affected. It leads to ‘visual neglect’, meaning that such patient loses sight in terms of an entity on the opposite side of where the brain has been damaged. Music can be a cure to this visual problem since as people listen to their favorite music, they are visually very attentive, thus improving their attentiveness. Such a group of music fanatics can rarely get a visual problem.
Music Improves Verbal Intelligence
Music improves strength relating to written and spoken language. For example, when people listen to music over and over again and understand it, it teaches them new words and gives a new level of knowledge and understanding. Also, music instruments like piano, guitar, sapphires, and tambourine among others require a lot of concentration when learning how to play each of these instruments (Oakes & North, 2006). This contributes to mental and verbal intelligence as the mind gets challenged.
A study has essentially disclosed that children and adults who had more than three years of training in music and musical instruments have better reasoning capabilities, are more attentive, and perform better in other tasks like auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills unlike those who had none. They are also able to handle different tasks at the same time and understand emotions in the voice of their interlocutors. It also enhances improved executive functioning like problem solving, innovation, and dynamism.
Music Helps to Relax and Gives People Happiness
Listening to music provides an extra emotional power. For example: When a person is down, crashed broken and is feeling worn out by life’s event, it may be beneficial to some soft music. It has a way of helping to cool down, uplifting one’s spirit, and making him/her forget all worries/ troubles. Thus, music has a way of lifting spirit and restoring joy when people feel sad. Good music also helps to be full of energy and portray positive feelings to colleagues.
Even in cases where people are stuck on a traffic jam for hours or when the traffic is moving very slowly, music helps to cool down. One is likely to be more patient with the traffic jam if they are listening to their favorite music either on their car radio or phone unlike someone who is not listening to anything and is just waiting for the traffic to move faster so they can get to their destination. Thus, music also increases capacity to act patiently.
Music Roots Unity
Music is a social activity that brings people together. When human beings form groups, do vocals, practice, and sing together with an agenda of forming a band, a choir, a collabo, or a music group that just sings and dances together. It leads to people working together in unity as one, sharing ideas or meaning of the song. Since there are different categories of music, many people join groups or attend music concerts in line with their music taste. Thus, they can meet people with a similar music taste and decide to sing and dance together.
Music brings people closer to each other and provides for their intertwining. Thus, when given a different task, for example, of working on a project together like serving street children food and clothes, people are likely to do it better and more effectively because music have joined them and made them look at each other more or less like friends or family. It has given them a sense of belonging and provided a platform to meet and bond.
Music Helps to Exercise
Music comes along with rhythm and a lot of dancing and practicing. For example, when people are in a team preparing to sing, they usually do vocal practice and body exercises in order to be physically fit so that they can hold their breath and prolong words correctly when the soloist or a song requires that. In order to be good singers, people need to do a lot of physical exercises just so that their voices can produce required sounds (Deutsch, 2014).
Music also comes with a lot of dancing. Whether it is secular or gospel music, dancing enhances the flavor of the song and enables the crowd to enjoy it more. So, whether people are alone or in a group at a concert, they may find themselves dancing to a pattern. As they sing and dance to different rhythms and patterns designed by authors or on their own, they are exercising their bodies and minds. Thus, music is a good source of exercise (Cassidy & MacDonald, 2007).
Music also helps to drain mind of fatigue and to shut it down by sending a renewal message to the brain. It assists in continuing with a task that can be undertaken for much longer with music than in case one would not have been listening to it. For example, when people are in a gym exercising in silence, they are likely to get tired faster and finish their exercises a bit earlier than others who have been listening to music (Oakes & North, 2006). When someone is doing personal exercises like running, they are likely to run a longer distance without stopping when they are listening to some background music on their phones than when they are just silently running.
Music Remedies Heart Illnesses
Music has an effect of handling in a positive way cardiac ailments. It does spectacular things medicine has never done. A recent analysis analyzes twenty three reports relating to one thousand and five hundred heart patients from a perspective of an invention explaining that listening to music actually helps lower blood pressure, slow down the heart rate, and diminish anxiety of persons suffering from heart disorders and diseases (Snyder, 2009).
Mortal Music Preferences Calculate Their Disposition
Via a study and a survey conducted on such five personality traits as openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness, it has been shown that some patterns are more predictable based on the person’s listening knacks (Deutsch, 2014). For instance, dance fans are inventive and outward-bound, but not gentle unlike admirers of soul music who have high self-esteem, are creative, at ease, gentle, and outgoing (Snyder, 2009). Music is hence a tool to predict human behavior.
It also explains introverts’ and extroverts’ habits and their choice of music. For example, most introverts like soft music like – classic music, blues and souls, they don’t like a lot of dancing, especially in public, and they don’t like boom music. Soft and gentle music creates an environment for them to think and relax and, in turn, it promotes high self-esteem (Snyder, 2009). Extroverts, on the contrary, love attention, thus liking loud music like rap and dance music. Thus, a personality characterized by this music is marked by roughness, high self-esteem, as well as being creative and outgoing (Deutsch, 2014).
Music Keeps an Aging Brain Healthy
Listening to or playing music, undertaking trainings on music or music instruments, and attending music concerts and shows can help one keep the brain healthy because music has a way of exercising the brain, especially as people age (Snyder, 2009). Music causes an increase in memory capacity and mental sharpness even as one grows older. Even people with some form of a brain damage can regain partial or full memory capacity back as listening to music helps to restore old memories and neurological patterns due to the fact that rhythm and sound of music remain deeply embedded at the core of minds for a very long time (Ockelford, 2009).
Excitement that also comes with music for the elderly people also activates something in their brains as they listen to songs that were sung many years ago, for example, during some remarkable events in the history of their country. Once such song is sung, a sense of belonging and pride emerges, causing excitement (Cassidy & MacDonald, 2007). This triggers the brain to release positive chemicals that in turn cause happiness, shed off stress, and causes long life to the individual.
Music Improves Creativity
Music is like food for souls. It enhances, refreshes, and strengthens human bodies and minds. Music provides a challenge depending on personality and people embark on it to learn new things. For example, when a singer sings a lot about his/her country, politics, or community, listeners are challenged to dig deeper into the roots of the song and learn a bit about them (Snyder, 2009). It stimulates the brain to read and think widely (Deutsch, 2014).
Sometimes, a singer can mention something that triggers brain or inspires them to think in a certain direction or come up with a solution to the problem. For example, some singers sing about their personal experiences while growing up and, as people listens, they may think the problem over and get an insight on how to solve that problem (Ockelford, 2009). They may then decide to bring their thoughts into action and in turn reach out to millions just through a thought triggered by music, for example, a solution to develop an education application that can reach millions of children who cannot afford basic education due to poverty or other related factors. Thus, in this case it is possible to say that music increases the level of processing difficulties, which in turn leads to higher creativity (Salimpoor et al., 2011).