​Introduction:

Music is an extremely big part of our daily lives. We hear it when we turn our radios on in the mornings, when we go out to eat, and when we go on social media; the list goes on. Music can also play important roles in people’s lives including weddings, lullabies when we are born, or even singing happy birthday. Music is something that we can never escape no matter where we go, but how is it that music has such an ability to draw us in? Listening to or playing music can have an array of emotional responses; from exciting fans at a stadium or preparing a jogger for a run, to serving as a release for many people by reducing anxiety, blood pressure, and pain, and improving our quality of sleep, mood, alertness, and memory. [1] Music can also serve as a “social glue” for people, tying together communities and cultures with certain events or memories. In this blog post, we will learn about the ways in which listening or playing music can serve as therapy and affect our emotional and physical well-being, including our motor skills, memory, immune system, and more.

Figure 1. This diagram is used to demonstrate the brain regions involved in auditory function, rhythm, motor, and cognitive function, emotion, and pleasure. This diagram can be very useful to refer back to if you come across any brain regions in the text that is confusing. (Audiocura)

How Music Affects Our Brains Chemically:

Listening or playing music has been shown to impact chemicals in our brains including the release of endorphins, which are a group of hormones in our brains that helps relieve pain and stress in our bodies, and improve our overall sense of well-being [2] (Figure 2). In addition to endorphins, listening to or playing music has been shown to release dopamine in our brains. Dopamine gets released in the center of our brain in a structure called the pineal gland. This is also the same location where the molecule melatonin is released, which acts to dictate humans based on the light or darkness in our environments or the time of day. [3] Dopamine is a chemical that essentially makes your brain feel good and helps the receptors in our brains communicate (Figure 2). It takes part in allowing people to feel pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation. It has been shown that this chemical plays a role in controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, and concentration. [4]

Dopamine release affects our memory by stimulating the receptors in our hippocampus, which is a complex brain structure that plays a role in learning and memory. [5] It is able to orchestrate the formation of new memories, providing our brains with a wider ability to remember past experiences. It is also known as a “feel good” chemical, similar to oxytocin or serotonin, improving our mood positively. [6] What’s more, dopamine initiates the production of melatonin, which is a molecule that induces drowsiness and helps bodies prepare to sleep. You may have heard about “melatonin gummies”, which people may use if they are having trouble falling asleep. As we talked about before, melatonin is produced in the pineal gland, along with dopamine. So it is no surprise that dopamine plays a role in the release of melatonin, allowing people to sleep easier and better. Lastly, dopamine can benefit our ability to learn and retain information through positive feedback loops [7]. Positive feedback loops in biology are when the product of a reaction leads to an increase in that reaction. [8] An example of this would be fruit ripening. [8]. Looking at an apple tree, you may notice that one day it is unripe apples but then the next morning it has beautifully ripe apples. This occurs because of the positive feedback loop where once one apple on a tree ripens, it produces a chemical called ethylene. Once ethylene is produced, it spreads to the rest of the tree in almost a wave, causing the rest of the tree to ripen. Dopamine has many benefits, so a study wanted to show and explore the impacts of dopamine on learning. To do this, scientists injected dopamine into dopamine-deficient mice, not injecting half of the subjects. In the end, the results demonstrated that the mice with dopamine injections succeeded in doing the tasks that they were given and were able to learn a lot faster than the mice without dopamine [9].

Now that we have talked about the effects of listening to music on dopamine and endorphin production in the brain, let’s talk about how listening to music can affect the amount of cortisol produced in our brains. It has been shown through CT scans (Computed Tomography Scan) that music promotes the release of cortisol, which is a stress-related hormone. This hormone acts to maintain steady conditions within our brain relating to body temperature, blood pressure, and more. You can think of cortisol as an “alarm system” for our bodies, that helps our bodies decipher what essential functions we would need if a fight-or-flight situation were to occur. These types of situations are when we are going through extreme stress or fear and our bodies choose to either fight back or flee from the situation [10]. The right amount of cortisol in our brains is healthy and neurotypical, however, when we have too much or not enough cortisol, it can be very dangerous. Listening to and playing music promotes a healthy amount of cortisol to be produced, in addition to peptide antibodies like immunoglobulin. 

Immunoglobulin is an antibody that works to identify bacteria and viruses within the immune system, and then terminate them once they are identified. [11]. Having the right amounts of immunoglobulin and cortisol in our bodies is very beneficial for individuals because it strengthens our immune systems. Our immune system is composed of organs, tissues, cells, and proteins that work to protect cells and defend our bodies against infection. Having a strong immune system is important to our health because it can ensure that our bodies do not get sick. [12]. Immunoglobulin A production is increased when a person listens to or plays music on a routine, creating a stronger defense system against disease. [13] 

Figure 2. This figure is used to demonstrate different chemicals that are released in our brains when listening to music, which can act to alter our mood.

Brain Plasticity and Music:

What is brain plasticity? Brain plasticity, also known as neural plasticity, is the ability of the neural networks in our brains to change through growth and reorganization according to their stimuli. Similar to plastic, it has the ability to change based on its environment. For example, when plastic is heated up, it will change its state to liquid form as it melts. Listening or playing music provides an impact for people that can rewire and change structures in the brain. [14]. 

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), scientists have proved that the frontal portion of the corpus callosum, which are millions of nerve fibers that connect and promote the right and left brain hemispheres [15], is significantly larger when comparing musicians to non-musicians.[16] This is because musicians make lots of use of interhemispheric connections when they are playing music, in contrast to non-musicians who do not need it as much. In addition to a larger corpus callosum in the brain for musicians, MRI scans have shown that musicians have much more asymmetry in their brains than non-musicians. Musicians showed to have a larger right motor cortex (Figure 1), which is in charge of physical movements where we use our muscles to move [17]. This is a response to using intense motor skills at a young age, causing this right motor cortex to be more developed than in non-musicians. Similarly, scientists found that the cerebellum (Figure 1), the structure that is located near where your brain connects to your spinal cord and works with muscle movements [18], has a larger volume in musicians because of completing complicated finger movements, such as the piano, at a young age (Table 1). The complexity of these finger and muscle movements while playing instruments causes the cerebellum to be more developed and therefore have more volume for musicians. (Table 1) Scientists also found an increased amount of grey matter and white matter in the motor and auditory regions of our cerebellum. Gray matter is essentially tissues in the brain that are composed of many cells. White matter is similar to grey matter, however, it is found within the deeper regions of our brain and is made up of nerve fibers instead of cells [19] (Figure 4). This is because of the repetitive use of these structures while practicing and playing instruments. 

Figure 3: The figure above is used to showcase the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This information is useful because certain aspects of our lives utilize either the right or left brain, which can cause differences between the two hemispheres. For instance, musicians must use both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which causes a stronger connection between the two (in the corpus callosum)  which makes it more advanced and complex. However, if you work with lots of calculations and science in your life, the left side of your brain may be stronger and more advanced.

Figure 4: This diagram depicts the human brain, showing where gray matter and white matter are located. As you can see, there are distinct differences between the two. While the white matter is deeper into the regions of our brains, the grey matter is not as deep and is between structures of our brains instead of within them, like tissue. [19]

Table 1: This table is used to show the structural brain changes, also known as brain plasticity, that brains that are exposed to music undergo. It also shows changes in brain function. The table talks about how there is a larger hippocampus in musicians compared to non-musicians. In addition, there is more asymmetry, as talked about before, in musicians. There also showed to be an increased amount of grey matter in different parts of the brain as well. [20] 

How Music Affects Our Cognitive and Motor Skills:

Listening to music has the ability to change the structure and chemicals produced in our brains, but did you know that it also plays a role in improving cognitive and motor skills? But what are these types of skills? Motor skills are anything from biking to writing an essay where our bodies use muscles to move certain parts of our bodies in order to achieve a task. This occurs in the primary motor cortex (Figure 1).  Motor skills are a crucial part of our lives and are one of the leading factors in child development [21]. Cognitive skills are similar to motor skills, except the brain works more with mental tasks rather than physical ones. This includes processing sound, creating logical reasoning, keeping attention, and long-term memory.[22] This occurs in the primary auditory cortex, the hippocampus, and the frontal lobe (Figure 1).

Listening to music has been shown to be able to improve the cognitive responses and motor responses of people who are exposed to music. [23] What does this mean? Cognitive and motor responses are essentially how fast or slow your body is able to respond to situations. For instance, processing speaking or music is a cognitive response while obeying orders to do a specific task such as lifting your arm is a motor response. Let’s get into how this occurs in our brains. Saccacid eye movements are essentially just quick eye movements, where the center of gaze is constantly shifted. Since musicians are required to use saccacid eye movements when reading music, their brains have adapted and learned to process visual information faster. This is an example of a cognitive brain response. Saccacid eye movements require the dorsolateral frontal lobe in our brains. This region of our brains is responsible for selective attention and memory. [24] Therefore, the constant reading of music and using saccacid movements improves our cognitive responses including visual processing, and improves our memory and attention span. A study tested control subjects compared to musicians and showed that musicians had faster and better visual cognition. To prove this point, the scientists provided subjects with a neuropsychological task where they had to detect the position of a dot on a line. This image then disappeared, and subjects were required to keep an image of the line and dot in their brains. When comparing the two groups, musicians showed to have a shorter reaction time than non-musicians. This showed that musicians had enhanced visual cognitive capabilities than non-musicians. [25] 

Next, let’s talk about how exposure to music can improve motor abilities in humans. As we covered previously, the skills that musicians must grasp while learning to play music can change the structure of their brains by making structures bigger or more advanced. For instance, musicians need to read and translate the music written on paper into a movement that provides them with sounds, improves reaction times in their brains, and allows them to make the connection between what they see and what their hands do. Listening to or playing music has the ability to make the frontal lobe including the primary motor cortex more advanced. The primary motor cortex is responsible for generating signals that make your body move. Strengthening this area of the brain has incredible effects on our everyday lives, including faster reaction times to stimuli. The cerebellum and basal ganglia are also strengthened when listening to music or playing music. The cerebellum (Figure 1) is responsible for coordinating functions in our bodies and brains. Although this structure is small, it holds more than half the neurons in your entire body. The basal ganglia are subcortical nuclei in our brains that are responsible for motor function, emotions, and behavior. As you can see, listening to music strengthens many different parts of our brains that are responsible for motor functions, so easy to see why listening to music has such an effect on the motor functions in our body. Do you ever wonder why athletes listen to music before games or practices? It is clear that listening to certain music can energize players before they must perform, but how does this occur, and in what other ways does this music improve athletic performance? Well, listening to music has proven to release what is known as “happy chemicals”, or “feel-good chemicals” (Figure 2) as we talked about before, such as serotonin, endorphins, dopamine, and oxytocin. These happy chemicals work to improve productivity, happiness, and strength which can essentially energize and lift up people before they go out and play their sport. As talked about in my previous blog post, happy memories connecting back to this music can also play a role in releasing these happy chemicals. Similarly, athletes can use this music to center their minds which allows them to focus and concentrate more on their sport instead of relying on their muscle memory and in a way, going on autopilot. It allows them to set a visual goal in their mind and take their minds off the stress of their environments. Listening to music before a game can also serve as a release that can relieve any anxiety. Now that we have talked about the way in which music can improve our motor and cognitive function, let’s talk about the thing that is most important when we are listening to music, our emotions. 

Emotional Responses to Music:

Emotions are what make us want to listen to music. Whether it is the feeling of release that it gives you when you are dancing to it or the relaxation that it enables you to feel when you are listening to a more mellow song, music influences our emotions in different ways which makes us want to continue to listen to it. We now know that listening and playing music has the ability to alter the chemistry and plasticity of our brains, along with the way that we function including our motor and cognitive skills. But did you know that we feel emotional responses to music not only because it makes us happy but also because of the processes in our brains? Music has the ability to make us feel a wide variety of different emotions, happiness, sadness, fear, and more. These different feelings can come from a range of different stimuli such as the climax leading up to a crescendo in music, the start of singing, loudness, and tempo. [26] These stimuli can target the cardiovascular part of our bodies, as well as the way that we feel through the paralimbic and cortical brain areas. The paralimbic region of our brain is located over the limbic part of our brain and works with emotional processing, goal setting, motivation, and self-control. It serves a variety of other cognitive and emotional processes as well. The temporal lobe, corpus callosum, and cingulate cortex are located in this area of our brain. [27] The cortical areas of our brain are the ones that are located in the cerebral cortex and include the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, and the temporal lobe [28] (Figure 1). These structures work for our senses, contributing to memory, thinking, learning, problem-solving, emotions, and more. [29] Now how do stimuli target our emotions? One way in which music influences the structures in our brains, allowing us to feel a certain sensation or emotion is related to our cerebellum (Figure 1). The cerebellum is located on the part of our brain that is connected to our spinal cord. The cerebellum is responsible for motor tasks as well as coordinating functions in our brains and body. When listening to music, the cerebral blood flow becomes faster, which translates to our bodies in the form of goosebumps, making us feel as though shivers are going down our spines. While blood flow has the capability to change our emotions, heart rate does too. All music is composed of rhythm, beats, tone, frequency, repetition, and sometimes lyrics. When we are exposed to either slow music or fast music, our parasympathetic nervous systems are affected, making our heartbeat slower or faster [33]. The parasympathetic nervous system is the network of nerves that works to relax our bodies. A study was conducted [33] which was used to decide whether or not music is a factor that can change our heart rates. 100 healthy adults were asked to lie down on a couch and had their heart rate and blood pressure measured. Slow music was played for all adults, and their heart rates and blood pressures were measured once again. This was repeated then repeated with faster and more upbeat music. The results demonstrated that there was a decrease in heart rate and blood pressure after listening to slow music, however, there was an increase in heart rate and blood pressure after listening to fast music. Our heart rates changed when listening to different music, dictating whether we felt happy and energized, or relaxed and sad. On this note, let’s get more into how music can change the way we feel, including stress responses or emotions.

Music as Therapy:

As we know, music can be used to calm anxiety and help our bodies and brains in various numbers of ways. But did you know that music is capable of acting as therapy that can help improve the effects of diseases such as Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy (a disorder that affects the way that people move and their balance), Alzheimer’s and even cure the effects of people who have undergone strokes or brain trauma?  Listening to music stimulates the regions of our brains that processes sound and complete cognitive function. It also increases activity in the connectivity of neuronal and sensorimotor regions. [30]. Exercising these parts of our brain can be therapeutic for strokes and other disorders because it almost forces our brains to use these specific structures, which helps make them stronger. Similarly, if you injure yourself physical therapists will usually give you exercises that target that specific part of your body to make it stronger and help it improve. In addition, people who used their fine motor skills while playing instruments have been shown to have better luck with getting their motor skills back after a stroke and overall gaining better motor capabilities after injuries. [31] Music has the ability to change our emotions, which is why it is a very effective and noninvasive technique of therapy. This invocation of emotions is helpful for people who have autism, depression, and other mood disorders. Music also has the ability to bring people together, affecting our social and emotional well being which can also contribute to therapy for humans because positive well-being is a therapy in itself for people with disorders. In addition to all this, music has the ability to decrease the seizure frequency in our brains, which is how often people experience seizures. Seizures are when there is a sudden, uncontrollable electrical disturbance in the brain. They can cause changes in your mood, behavior, levels of consciousness, and movements. [32].  These are generally caused by epilepsy, which is a disorder in the nerves in our brains. When sometimes drugs are not the most reliable cure for seizures depending on the person and case, music has been shown to be able to stop refractory status epilepticus (which is a life-threatening medical emergency [34] ). Electroencephalography (EEG) is used to measure electric activity in the brain by attaching metal discs to the side of a person’s scalp. This is what allows us to see that music has the effect of being able to stop seizures [34]. Music acts as therapy to all people in so many different ways, sometimes without us even realizing it. Music acts to not only help people that have seizures, or Parkinson’s disease but also can relieve simple stress or anxiety within our daily lives. It doesn’t have to be a medically diagnosed disorder for music to help us with problems in our daily lives which is why it is so important. 

Conclusion:

Music is a major element of most people’s lives. From listening to music in the locker room to playing music while studying, music serves an important purpose in the lives of everyone, which is why it is crucial that we know these effects. In this blog post, we learned about the chemicals and hormones that are produced when listening to music and how the releasing of these chemicals has the ability to make us happy, or sleepy. We learned about brain plasticity and how listening to or playing music will target specific parts of our brains, making them bigger and more advanced. For instance, the frontal portion of the corpus callosum, the area that connects our two brain hemispheres is more advanced in musicians than nonmusicians because they have to make those connections more. We also learned about the ways in which listening to or playing music can improve our motor and cognitive function. Lastly, we learned about the emotional responses that music provides for us and how music can be used as a therapy for a variety of disorders. Learning about the way in which music affects our brain is so important as music is a leading component in the lives of so many people. Here is a short ted talk about the effects of playing music on the brain. I found this to be very interesting and even easier to understand! Learning about these remarkable effects that music has on our brains is such a useful tool for parents, teachers, scientists, and doctors to help better their own lives and the lives of the people around them. I would love to hear your suggestions so be sure to email me with any ideas for future blog posts!