Scientific evidence has shown that certain styles of music in specific situations can have an affect on the brain. Scientist have found that music has a generally positive effect on the brain. The Mozart Effect, which has lots of controversy attached to it, is one of the key evidence they use to support their research. Some researchers have even gone as far to say that any person who can play an instrument are smarter and have stronger brains than most humans. Due to these statements by researchers, parents have started to have their kids learn an instrument and have them listen to classical music starting at a young ages.
Certain types of music have shown that they cause an effect on your brain and overall your mood and behavior . Pitch, tempo, and the melodies patterns are the things that determine what type of mood and behavior the song will generally produce. Music with high pitch’s, fast rhythms and escalating tempos generally causes a sense of feeling of anxiety and panic. Music with low pitches, slow rhythms and declining tempos generally causes a sense of feeling of calmness along with sadness also. Because music has the ability to determine mood, and mood determines behavior, the type of music that is listened to can have a negative or positive affect on behavior. Researches have found that listening to heavy metal and rap can cause “bad” behavior such as drug and alcohol use, lower test and class grades which can lead to depression, self-harm. Studies done by the Scripps Howard News Service discovered that rock music causes abnormal neuron structure in the region of the brain associated with learning and memory which can make it difficult to store information correctly. They also found that rock music increases adrenalin levels compared to slow piano which has a calming affect. Several studies have been done on how music affects the brain but one college student, Dorthy Retallack, in 1968 started to research how music affects plants. She tested this by using classical, jazz, pop, rock, acid rock, East Indian, and country music. Her experiment conclude that the plants grew the best when listening to Jazz and Classical music compared to Rock music which caused the plant to wither and die. In conclusion music not only has an effect on our brains but it also has an effect on plants health.
Listening to music can have lots of positive effects on the brain and the body. Listening to music increases the neurotransmitter dopamine in the human brain. Live music stimulates the brain's hormone oxytocin which is the trust making molecule in the brain. Music can enhance a mood and also cause increased intelligence by enhancing the learning and concentration levels which slows down the aging of the brain. Music is used today in many hospitals to ease pain and lower anxiety of patients because music is linked to preventing fatigue and regulate blood pressure levels and the pulse . Patients who listen to music before surgery report having a lower anxiety,pulse, and blood pressure than patients who did not listen to music. Music is also said to relieve pain from Bone Marrow patients. Music therapy has been used to help people with multiple mental disorders develop social skills like patients with schizophrenia who find music calming and for non verbal people who have communication difficulties to have a medium for communication. Many children who have behavioral and attention problems reported positive behavior changes and greater attention after attending Music therapy. Music is very powerful to the brain even Alzheimer's patients recall familiar songs 62% of the time compared to spoken words that are only remembered about 37% of the time . Also premature babies also gain weight faster when listening to music compared to the premature babies that didn't this is due to because music can help brain development which premature babies mostly lack.
Humans have been listening and making music since the beginning of civilization. Some of the first instruments that were invented during that era were the jaw harps, flutes and different types of drums and other percussion instruments. Brain scans have proved that the brains of people who play instruments are different to those who don't play an instrument. The volume of musicians auditory cortex is 130% larger, they also have larger Cornus Callosums, and the two halfs of the brain are more symmetrical than non musicians.
In History music was created, listened to, and used for many purposes.Music has been in every single culture. It's been used to signify the coming of a war and victories and defeats . You sing at birthdays and play music at funerals during holidays even . Music is used in almost every aspect of a life.The use of music in hospitals to help patients started in the 1950s in the United States and it was also used in Europe but it is believed to have started earlier in the 1900s in mental hospitals for the mentally ill musicians . Music is also a big part of history. When King Saul felt like his mind and soul were in trouble he would have David play the harp for him. Thomas Jefferson while writing the Declaration of Independence could not figure out the right word to use in a passage he would play his violin to help him think of a word and take it from his brain to words on paper. Albert Einstein also shows proof in history that music can have a positive effect on the brain. He was known as one of the smartest men in history but it wasn't always that way. Albert struggled very bad thru school to the point when his teachers told his parents to take him out because the school thought he was “too stupid to learn” and he was wasting the school's resources,time, and energy being put into his education. The school believed it would be his best bet to be put to manual labor as soon as possible. But Alberts believed in her son and didn't believe the schools claims of Albert being stupid. His parents decided to buy him a Violin and because of learning to be very good at the violin in made Albert a very smart man. A friend of Einstein's said that the violin was the solution to all his problems he would even use it to find the solution to and equatic problem. He loved to play Mozart which his experience adds to the Mozart Effect theory.
The Mozart Effect is a theory that began in the 1990s that stated when listening to the classical music composed by Mozart a famous composer of the Classical Era it made you smarter. This theory was the jumpstart of research for musical effect on the brain. Parents would even go so far into believing this they would listen to it before their baby was even born. The Mozart Effect theory has shaped itself into the belief that taking music lessons boosts the brain function and its structure not necessarily just listening to music composed by Mozart. Music lessons for children at young ages develop more brain plasticity which allow the brain to grow and make changes to its capacity. Children who have had musical lessons tend to get higher grades in core classes like language, reading and math and usually have better verbal skills than children who have had no musical lessons. Music lessons for just 30 minutes already increases the blood flow in the left hemisphere of the brain. Music also protects your brain against memory loss even if it's multiple decades later it can still have these effects.