Numerous Waterford High School students wear their Airpods or Beats during passing periods or class, but they rarely know the effects of music on their brain. While music can be distracting to some, there are many benefits in incorporating music into one’s academics and their overall health.
To explain the benefits of listening to music, it’s best to learn the processes happening inside the brain while we play our favorite songs. When we play a song, dopamine, the chemical that gives the feeling of pleasure, is released into our body. Eating sugary and unhealthy food is what gives an equivalent reaction.
Dopamine can become addictive to the body, and a reason why we listen to music so often, is to chase that dopamine rush. When listening to new songs, brains become more and more familiar with the sounds and lyrics the more we replay. The more familiar with a song we become, our brains can easily recognize the sounds and begin this release of dopamine instantaneously.
This release of dopamine is responsible for the overwhelming feeling of excitement and happiness when we listen to our favorite song. Our bodies crave familiarity, which drives you to replay and replay songs that you enjoy and continue to release dopamine. Consequently, music can be used as a tool to heighten your mood.
The human brain can associate emotion with certain sounds or music. Although music cannot directly make us feel a certain emotion, our brains can recognize the mood of music. A slow, quiet and mellow song evokes feelings of sadness while fast, loud, and high pitched music evokes feelings of excitement and happiness. Interestingly, processing the mood of a song is possible even when words are incoherent and cannot be recognized.
According to Pfizer: “Science has documented numerous instances of people who suffered brain injuries and lost their ability to distinguish melodies but retained the ability to recognize the emotion conveyed by music.”
Considering that memory is heightened by emotion, music has the property to also enhance memories while listening. This is demonstrated when the limbic system in our bodies, responsible for processing emotion, lights up when music is played. In addition, listening to music causes increased blood flow to the brain, especially the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is responsible for memory which strengthens the relationship between memory music and enhances the vividness of our memories.
While music is used for one’s own pleasure, its benefits can be used as therapy. Music can boost your mood through the release of dopamine. The release of dopamine can be utilized as a distraction from the issue causing the anxiety. Moreover, music can be used for vibrational therapy. Music or sound of any kind is a vibration which affects our emotional, physical and behavioral health.
Physically, research shows that patients that undergo vibrational therapy regularly can reduce pain by about 50%. In addition, vibrational therapy can increase blood flow, improve muscle mobility, and increase muscle relaxation. Even though music is primarily used for our own emotional pleasure, its numerous physical health benefits should not be unnoticed.
Any Waterford High School student knows that the hallways are usually littered with students with Airpods or headphones. Since school is the primary source of stress for adolescents, music can help balance your mood while at WHS.
When asked when she listens to music during school, Senior Cate Smathers says “Yeah, when I’m in a bad mood. If I don’t feel like talking to anyone I can listen to music and feel better.” Using music is a tool which many students use without knowing. By tricking our brains to release dopamine while listening to music, we can manipulate emotions.
Listening to music can also improve memory and focus. The emotional association our brain makes with music enhances our memories, which makes music a useful tool for studying. Music can also help focus when doing work as well. Some people find silence the only way they can think clearly.
On the contrary, many students become more distracted in silence. Audra Fiono says, “I listen to it when there is no other sound and I don’t want to be on my phone and want background noise.” Science says that this ‘background noise’ is used as a way to calm nerves.
Each human has a given amount of mental capacity, or brain space, to do everyday things like think, make decisions and interpret our sensory information. When we listen to music we take up more of our mental capacity and distracts us from our surroundings or a source of anxiety. Background noise when we go to sleep is used in this way to focus less on the room around you and more on falling asleep.
Listening to music is much more complex than one might expect. Whether music is part of your everyday life or not, its benefits should not be overlooked.
