Can you think of a time in your life when music shifted your mood or called to mind a good memory? Music can have a positive effect on our well-being, enhancing our mood, decreasing anxiety, helping us manage stress and express and process our emotions, and can even increase our energy.
As you might have guessed – given that I’m sharing this with you – there’s a chemical story here. Research has found that music heightens positive emotion through the reward centers of our brain – stimulating the release of dopamine (pleasure/reward). It also has been found to boost oxytocin (social bonding/trust), while also reducing levels of cortisol (stress), (which we need to get up and out of bed in the morning, but should be kept at optimal low levels).
Listening to music also lights up other areas of the brain—in fact, leaving almost no brain center left untouched—which suggests that there may be even more positive news related to music in the future.
According to Suzanne Hanser, president of the International Association for Music & Medicine (IAMM) and professor of music therapy at Berklee College of Music, the impact of music starts in the brain, where music activates many regions, including those associated with emotion and memory. “The music that was played at your wedding or in a religious service, or even at a concert you attended or a dance you were at — that music remains preserved for those neuropathways that connect that music with really positive feelings,” Hanser says.
Findings from the 2020 AARP Music and Brain Health Survey, found that listening to music — whether in the background, by focused listening to recordings or at musical performances — had a positive impact on mental well-being, depression and anxiety. "Especially now, in times when people are feeling sad, stressed and isolated because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people should definitely turn to music to better their mental well-being,” says GCBH Executive Director Sarah Lenz Lock, AARP's senior vice president for policy.
Music has a marked impact on us throughout our lives. Here are three ways that music has been found to support our health and wellbeing (excerpted from Psychologist, Jill Suttie’s article in the Greater Good Magazine).
Managing Stress, Anxiety – and Even Pain:
Music can prevent anxiety-induced increases in heart rate and systolic blood pressure, biological markers of stress, while decreasing cortisol levels—reducing stress and anxiety.
Performing music, versus listening to music, has been found to have a calming effect on us. In studies with adult choir singers, singing the same piece of music tended to synch up their breathing and heart rates, producing a group-wide calming effect.
In a recent study, 272 premature babies recovering in a neonatal ICU were exposed to different kinds of music three times a week—either lullabies sung by parents or instruments played by a music therapist. All musical forms improved the babies’ functioning, but the parents singing had the greatest impact and also reduced the stress of the parents who sang.
It can be difficult at times in studies to distinguish the effects of music versus other factors, (e.g., the positive impacts of simple social contact). However, at least one recent study found that music had a unique contribution to make in reducing anxiety and stress in a children’s hospital, above and beyond social contributions.
In several studies, including one study on patients receiving surgery for hernia repair and another study on patients undergoing spine surgery, those who listened to music post surgery experienced less pain; (in the first study they had decreased plasma cortisol levels and required significantly less morphine to manage their pain and in the second where they also listened to music before surgery and for two days following surgery, they had significantly less pain than a control group that did not listen to music). In another study of surgery patients, the stress reducing effects of music were more powerful than the effect of an orally-administered anxiolytic drug.
Improving Immune function
Researchers at Wilkes University looked at how music affects levels of IgA—an important antibody for our immune system’s first line of defense against disease. Undergraduate students had their salivary IgA levels measured before and after 30 minutes of exposure to one of four conditions: listening to a tone click, a radio broadcast, soothing music, or silence. Students exposed to soothing music had significantly greater increases in IgA than any of the other conditions, suggesting that exposure to music (and not other sounds) might improve innate immunity. (In the book, Physical Intelligence, we talk about how meditation thickens IgA, strengthening the immune system…so consider adding soothing music to your meditation for an even greater immune system boost. )
A study from Massachusetts General Hospital found that listening to Mozart’s piano sonatas helped relax critically ill patients by lowering stress hormone levels. but also decreased blood levels of interleukin-6—a protein that has been implicated in higher mortality rates, diabetes, and heart problems.
Aiding Memory
As I’ve written about in the past, dopamine is the key chemical for motivation. This, in turn, is implicated in learning and memory. In one study, adult students studying Hungarian were asked to speak, or speak in a rhythmic fashion, or sing phrases in the unfamiliar language. Afterwards, when asked to recall the foreign phrases, the singing group fared significantly better than the other two groups in recall accuracy.
In a 2008 experiment, stroke patients in rehab were randomly tasked with listening daily to self-selected music, an audio book, or nothing (in addition to receiving their usual care). The patients were then tested on mood, quality of life, and several cognitive measures at one week, three months, and 6 months post-stroke. Results showed that those in the music group improved significantly more on verbal memory and focused attention than those in the other groups, and they were less depressed and confused than controls at each measuring point.
In a more recent study, caregivers and patients with dementia were randomly given 10 weeks of singing coaching, 10 weeks of music listening coaching, or neither. Afterwards, testing found that singing and music listening improved mood, orientation, and memory and, to a lesser extent, attention and executive functioning, as well as providing other benefits. Studies like these have encouraged a movement to incorporate music into patient care for dementia patients, in part promoted by organizations like Music and Memory.
…But, Does Music Make Us Smarter?
You may be familiar with the Mozart Effect, (the claim that playing Mozart stimulates brain development, improves IQ, and spurs creativity in children and that playing it while children are in utero can help stimulate the growth of sophisticated neural trails that help the brain to process information). While that theory has been debunked, (and Dr. Frances Rauscher, who conducted the original 1993 Mozart experiment, has stressed that the findings extend to only spatial-temporal reasoning, and not to general intelligence, as has been suggested in the media and popular culture), a 1997 University of California, Los Angeles, study of 25,000 students, found that students who had spent time involved in a musical pursuit tested higher on SATs and reading proficiency exams than those with no instruction in music. In addition, a 2011 study carried out by Dr. Sylvain Moreno and colleagues found that 90% of children who received musical training over 20 days showed improved verbal intelligence.
It’s worth highlighting that sometimes music can have a negative impact on us. For example, it may recall a painful memory and lead us to feel worse. Be mindful of your music choices – select music that you have found will help you cope in a positive way. According to livingwell.org in Australia, to discover the effect certain pieces of music have on you, consider the following:
Does the music allow you to sit with a mood, change a mood or set a new mood?
Does it make you feel better or worse?
Is it helpful to feel worse? When does it stop being helpful? For example, rather than music having a calming effect on you, listening to it might make you feel more angry or anxious.
When is it not helpful?
Is it a certain style of music that is helpful or unhelpful or is it a certain artist or words in a song?
To start actively boosting music's mental-health benefits in your life, Hanser suggests that we can all adapt some of the techniques used by trained music therapists, including “deep” or active listening — where, instead of putting on music as background noise, we set aside time to concentrate on what we’re hearing, and noting the feelings, memories, and bodily sensations (such as slowing our heart rate or inspiring us to get up and dance) that arise as we listen to the music. Hanser shares that "We can do that even when we're feeling at our most isolated and sad. We can take control, we can be empowered by the music to feel differently.” That is a very Physically Intelligent outlook! Time to grab your headsets! For a comprehensive summary of studies related to the impact of music on various aspects of life at different ages and circumstances, read this Editorial: The Impact of Music on Human Development and Well Being.
How does music enhance your well being?
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