Most people play an instrument, whether they’ve just picked it up or if they’ve been playing it for several years. Even if you play the piano or the piccolo, do you notice that you feel happier after you practice or if your math grades are doing well? If you are, that’s normal. Modern research show that music affects the mind in many ways, and feeling good or doing well in math are only some of the possible effects music has on the mind.
Every person has a preference for music, no matter how varied it might be. If you listen to musical pieces, you may notice the use of perfect fifths or fourths. According to research, scientists are noticing that what seems to be a biologically based fondness, may explain the use of perfect fifths and fours in music across cultures and across centuries.
Scientists believe the brain holds a special place for music, as evidenced by the fact that people can remember dozens of tunes and can recognize hundreds more. However, people can usually remember only snatches of passages from a speech or book.
Music also affects people’s moods in powerful ways. Not only can music incite passion, aggression, serenity, or fear, but also it affects the mood of people who don’t know from experience that something will happen, for an example, that a particular crescendo in a thriller means that the killer is about to appear on the movie screen.
A psychologist at Brown University, Martin Gardiner, finds that kids who play an instrument often improve somewhat in school by ‘good mood’ and attention effects that come from playing music. However, kids who play an instrument usually just shoot ahead in math, and there’s something specific about music and math, he says. That something might be that music involves proportions, ratios, sequences-all of which underlie mathematical reasoning.
Another effect from playing music is that people normally become better at bi-manual movements. Also, a person’s prefrontal cortex, the sight of planning and foresight, and the premotor cortex, where actions are mapped out before they’re executed, are stronger, so musicians have better motor skills; and their right, linked to emotion, and left, linked to cognition, brain are strengthened, causing more understanding and emotion. Seeing all the benefits from playing music, you have something to look forward to next time you have lessons with your instrument; or if you want to learn how to play a new one, you have a reason backed by science to convince your parents to let you play the instrument.
