If music makes you feel alive, then you are onto something profound and true. Listening and moving to music is a wonderful cure for the blues – and a variety of other issues plaguing your brain.
It helps you think more clearly, remember words (thank you, lyrics!), be happier, and enjoy your days more. Whether you are air-drumming to Nirvana or Genesis, singing along with Celine Dion, or nodding as you listen to Bach, your neurons are firing up and having a party of their own.
A 2020 survey by the American Association of Retired Persons shows a myriad of benefits of treating yourself to a concert, a CD, an MP3, or even a music lesson. In part, it highlighted that music lowers your stress and level of depression, increases your ability to learn new things, and simply brightens your day. Even though the results are more anecdotal than scientific, they reflect an optimism and engagement level that tunes inspire in us, right from childhood.
What Happens When Your Brain Hears Music?
Music activates some of the many networks in your brain. Once your auditory cortex processes the sounds, it alerts your emotional center. It, in turn, turns on the regions that retain and rework memories, which is why you look for similar sounds, song titles, and flashbacks to other times when you have heard the same song or style of song. From here, your motor skills kick even, even if you haven’t started drumming your fingers on the steering wheel yet. Overall, most of your senses are awakened.
By firing up so many of your brain’s pathways, you are keeping them in shape for processing and manipulating other sources of information. By listening to new and old music, you are exercising different memories and forging new ones. Not only will this encourage you to try new experiences or activities, but it will also make it easier for you to learn them since your brain is so nimble.
Music improves your:
- Overall well-being
- Quality of life
- Level of happiness
- Ability to learn
- All cognitive skills
Do Your Happy Dance
Moving to music adds another dimension of joy, as you are getting exercise, unconsciously working to maintain your balance, developing music memory, and having fun! Even singing along uses more muscles than passively listening.
You get the minimum benefit from having music on in the background, with enhancements growing with each level of involvement from then on. In other words, put on some tunes right now and live it up. Dance in your living room. Play some dinner music. Do karaoke in your car.
Your brain will thank you for it all.
References
- 2020 AARP MUSIC AND BRAIN HEALTH SURVEY, https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/health/2020/music-and-brain-health.doi.10.26419-2Fres.00387.001.pdf
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-is-music-good-for-the-brain-2020100721062
