Why Your Brain Craves Music

by
Joseph Mercola

Recently
by Joseph Mercola:
What the Science Says About Intermittent Fasting



If you’re
a music lover, you already know that turning on the tunes can
help calm your nerves, make stress disappear, pump up your energy
level during a workout, bring back old memories, as well as
prompt countless other emotions too varied to list.

Even if
you’re not a music aficionado, per se, there are compelling
reasons why you may want to become one, which were recently
revealed by a series of new research.

Music
Prompts Numerous Brain Changes Linked to Emotions and Abstract
Decision Making

When you
listen to music, much more is happening in your body than simple
auditory processing. Music triggers activity in the nucleus
accumbens, a part of your brain that releases the feel-good
chemical dopamine and is involved in forming expectations.

At the
same time, the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotion,
and the prefrontal cortex, which makes possible abstract decision-making,
are also activated, according to new research published in the
journal Science.1

Based on
the brain activity in certain regions, especially the nucleus
accumbens, captured by an fMRI imager while participants listened
to music, the researchers could predict how much money the listeners
were willing to spend on previously unheard music. As you might
suspect, songs that triggered activity in the emotional and
intellectual areas of the brain demanded a higher price.

Interestingly,
the study’s lead author noted that your brain learns how to
predict how different pieces of music will unfold using pattern
recognition and prediction, skills that may have been key to our
evolutionary progress. Time reported:2

“These
predictions are culture-dependent and based on experience: someone
raised on rock or Western classical music won’t be able
to predict the course of an Indian raga, for example, and vice
versa.

But
if a piece develops in a way that’s both slightly novel
and still in line with our brain’s prediction, we tend
to like it a lot. And that, says [lead researcher] Salimpoor,
‘is because we’ve made a kind of intellectual conquest.’

Music
may, in other words, tap into a brain mechanism that was key
to our evolutionary progress. The ability to recognize patterns
and generalize from experience, to predict what’s likely
to happen in the future – in short, the ability to imagine
– is something humans do far better than any other animals.
It’s what allowed us (aided by the far less glamorous
opposable thumb) to take over the world.”

Why Music
Makes Us Feel United

So far
we’ve covered that music is involved in both emotional
and intellectual centers of your brain, but music also has an,
almost uncanny, ability to connect us to one another.

Separate
research published this month showed one reason for why this
might be. When listening to four pieces of classical music they
had never heard before, study participants’ brains reacted
in much the same way. Areas of the brain involved in movement
planning, memory and attention all had similar activation patterns
when the participants listened to the same music, which suggests
we may each experience music in similar ways.

The study’s
lead author noted:3

“We spend
a lot of time listening to music – often in groups, and often
in conjunction with synchronized movement and dance … Here,
we’ve shown for the first time that despite our individual differences
in musical experiences and preferences, classical music elicits
a highly consistent pattern of activity across individuals in several
brain structures including those involved in movement planning,
memory and attention.”

Co-author
Daniel Levitin, PhD, expanded:4

“It’s
not our natural tendency to thrust ourselves into a crowd of
20,000 people, but for a Muse concert or a Radiohead concert
we’ll do it … There’s this unifying force that comes
from the music, and we don’t get that from other things.”

Music
Relieves Anxiety Better Than Drugs and Benefits Premature Babies

If you
want a more concrete example of music’s powers, a meta-analysis
by Levitin and colleagues found some striking benefits of music
after reviewing 400 studies.5
Among the data was one study that revealed listening to music
resulted in less anxiety and lower cortisol levels among patients
about to undergo surgery than taking anti-anxiety drugs. Other
evidence showed music has an impact on antibodies linked to
immunity and may lead to higher levels of bacteria-fighting
immune cells.

Still more
research revealed that playing music in the neonatal intensive
care unit (NICU) improved the health of premature babies with
respiratory distress or sepsis.6
When parents sang to their babies, or sounds mimicking those
in the womb were played, numerous benefits occurred, including
changes in heart rates, sucking behavior and parents’
stress levels. The researchers noted:

“Entrained
with a premature infant’s observed vital signs, sound
and lullaby may improve feeding behaviors and sucking patterns
and may increase prolonged periods of quiet–alert states.
Parent-preferred lullabies, sung live, can enhance bonding,
thus decreasing the stress parents associate with premature
infant care.”

Taken together,
the latest research makes a strong case for using music as a therapeutic
tool for babies and adults alike.

Why Music
Should be a Part of Your Workouts, Too

Many people
instinctively don a headset linked to their favorite music when
hitting the gym, which makes sense since certain types of music
can motivate you to run faster, or keep going even though you’re
fatigued, giving you a better workout. Additionally, research has
shown that listening to music while exercising boosted cognitive
levels and verbal fluency skills in people diagnosed with coronary
artery disease (coronary artery disease has been linked to a decline
in cognitive abilities). Signs of improvement in verbal fluency
areas more than doubled after listening to music
compared to that of the non-music session.7

Listening to
music while exercising can also improve your performance, increasing
your endurance by 15 percent,8
and your movement will likely follow the tempo of the song. For
instance, in one study when the music’s tempo slowed, the subjects’
exertion level reduced as well.9
And when the tempo was increased, their performance followed suit.

Your body
may be simply responding to the beat on a more or less subconscious
level, but the type and tempo of the music you choose while
working out may also influence your conscious motivation.

What
Music Is Best?

When a song
gets you energized and rearing to go, you’ll know it, and these
are the types of songs you probably naturally add to your workout
playlist.  For that matter, when a song makes you feel relaxed,
eases your anxiety or pain levels, or boosts your mood, you’ll
know it too, as selecting music is a highly personal – and
highly intuitive – process. In other words, only you know
the “best” music for you, and that will inevitably change
– not only day to day with your mood but also over time with
the different chapters of your life.

For now, technology
has given us a simple way to harness the power of music by allowing
you to create different playlists for exercising, relaxing, working
and other important aspects of your day so you can instantly access
the right music for your mood or activity. You can also listen to
music over Internet radio using free services like Pandora, which
will actually create stations for you based on your musical tastes.

However, my
favorite music source is Spotify, which I believe is the new model
for listening to music. Rather than purchase music in iTunes or
CDs prior to that, you simply rent it. Spotify has access to over
16 million songs and most likely has well over 95% of the music
you would ever listen to. For $10 a month you can play all of your
favorite music on your phone, tablet, computer or home stereo system.
They even have high-quality bitrates at no extra charge. I have
been using them for about a year and am very pleased.

Whatever
method you choose, making music part of your lifestyle is a
simple yet powerful way to enhance your health and your life.

April
30, 2013

Copyright ©
2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola

The
Best of Joseph Mercola