Most of what we know about music and the brain has been discovered in the last few decades. Music is universal across all cultures, and, like other arts, is a function of specific social and cultural influences. Listening to or playing music can provide pleasure, joy, and comfort and create life-changing experiences that involve almost every part of our brain. According to neuroscience, listening to or playing even the simplest melody requires the interaction and collaboration of many parts of the brain. Neuroscience that focuses on examining the effects of music on the brain is now examining which specific chemicals in the brain are involved in listening to music and which chemicals are involved in playing music so that music can be used to support the health of both the brain and the body (Landau, 2016; Sacks, 2006).
Whether you are listening to rock music in your car or listening to Mozart at home, music affects our brain’s chemistry, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy. For example, music can change our mood, change our physiology, motivate us, or increase our ability to concentrate more effectively. Because of advances in neuroscience, researchers are now able to quantitatively measure how music affects the brain (Bergland, 2012).
Today, more people listen to music than ever before in the history of the world, and there are more avenues for experiencing music than anyone could have predicted even just a few years ago. Using functional magnetic resonance images (fMRIs), scientists can determine which neurons in the brain are active when someone is listening to music versus when no music is being heard. The field of music cognition (the study of music as a product of the human mind) existed before fMRIs, but there has been significant growth in this field of research and its application to health in recent years (Patel, 2015).
There are many avenues being used to integrate sound and music into the daily lives of individuals.
- Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship (American Music Therapy Association [AMTA], 2017).
- Music psychology is a subspecialty of psychology that uses music to support psychological and physical health (University of Sheffield, 2017).
- Psychoacoustics is the study of the perception of sound, including how we listen, our psychological responses to sound, and the physiological impact of music and sound on the human nervous system (Lakovides, 2004).