How Does Music Affect The Brain

The brain is a complex system that has not been fully understood. A living machine is what the brain is, but what if that machine can be altered? Studies have shown that music shape and mold this “machine” we call the brain. But why does the brain change when music is present? Studies have shown that music is able to alter the way an individual learns and behaves, showing rapid growth. In 2015, Northwestern University conducted a research of the correlation between music class, and the brain function of someone in said music class. This experiment was under the supervision of Nina Kraus, who is the senior study author at Northwestern Auditory Neuroscience, and in collaboration with “The Harmony Project” (Deardorff). The Harmony Project is

Results were gathered by putting electrodes on the subjects, and monitoring their brain activity. As Kraus noticed, those who enrolled in music class had greater sensitivity to sound and detail. Although due to poor funding, the results may have been more varied. According to Kraus “due to funding shortfalls – might hone brain development and improve language skills.” (Kraus). Music class, seems to be responsible for causing the greater attention to detail and sound. As mentioned by Kraus “Music does not teach skills that seem directly relevant to most careers… educators refer to as “learning to learn”. More importantly, it was shown in later studies that the music class had long term effects on the brain. This means that after participating in music class, the subjects continued to be more “mature” compared to those in ROTC. As mentioned before, one factor that did cause possible inaccurate results was the poor funding towards the music pragmas, compared to the more highly funded programs of the school. Research done by Northwestern University showed as well that the “neural processing of students who played instruments in class improved more than children who attended the music appreciation group” (Kraus). Neural processing is the way the brain

Research by NewsRx shows that music is able to change our emotions, as well as “long term music training can enhance a musician’s self-control and self-assessments” (NewsRx). This evidence supports the theory that music can “enhance” the brain into learning faster, comprehending more complex ideas, and have long term effects. According to NewsRx, compared to non-musicians, musicians have “larger high-frequency response, small low frequency vertex potentials.” Which in simpler terms means that musicians are able to comprehend higher levels of information. This reflects the same results as found by Nina Kraus and The Harmony Project. Which showed those who learned an instrument or participated in a music class, reached higher levels of comprehension. As mentioned by NewsRx in the findings “playing a musical instrument requires the functional integration of information related to multimodal sensory perception” (NewsRx 1). In shorter terms, the ability to learn an instrument requires the use of sensory perception (the ability to use senses) and motor execution (NewsRx 1). NewsRx theorizes that long term music training can enhance the brain even