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What is Music?
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Definitions of music vary depending on culture, though it is an aspect of all human societies and a cultural universal.
Music is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. Modern music is heard in a bewildering profusion of styles, many of them contemporary, others engendered in past eras. Music is a protean art; it lends itself easily to alliances with words, as in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion.
Popular culture has consistently exploited these possibilities, most conspicuously today by means of radio, film, television, musical theatre, and the Internet. The implications of the uses of music in psychotherapy, geriatrics, and advertising testify to a faith in its power to affect human behaviour.
From historical accounts it is clear that the power to move people has always been attributed to music; its ecstatic possibilities have been recognized in all cultures and have usually been admitted in practice under particular conditions, sometimes stringent ones. In India, music has been put into the service of religion from earliest times; Vedic hymns stand at the beginning of the record. As the art developed over many centuries into a music of profound melodic and rhythmic intricacy, the discipline of a religious text or the guideline of a story determined the structure.
What is the Effect of Music on Emotions?
The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music. The chills you feel when you hear a particularly moving piece of music may be the result of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that triggers sensations of pleasure and well-being. As your brain becomes familiar with a particular song, your body may release dopamine upon hearing just the first few notes of the song.
Interestingly, music can affect our mood even if we can’t recognize or replicate the notes and rhythm. 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. Researchers noted that these patients had sustained damage to the temporal lobes of the brain, a region involved in comprehending melody; their frontal lobes, which play a role in emotional regulation, were unaffected.
The mental processes involved in knitting individual sounds together into the overall perception of a song is quite similar to the process the brain goes through in reading, which involves first recognizing individual letters and sounds and then ultimately gleaning meaning from sentences and paragraphs. Working memory is involved in both processes, and scientists believe there’s a great deal of overlap between working memory for musical stimuli and for verbal stimuli.
Emotions, of course, enhance memory. Most adults can still recall every word of the songs they loved in high school – largely because adolescence is a time of heightened emotion. (The fact that most of us played those songs over and over also helps because if something is repeated a certain number of times it goes from being in your short - term memory to your long - term memory instead and stays there for a long long time).
It is even used in Pain Therapy, where Vibroacoustic therapy uses low frequency sound to produce vibrations that are applied directly to the body. At least seven scientific studies have shown improvement in motor function in individuals with cerebral palsy treated with vibroacoustic therapy.
The Bottom Line
Music can make us feel so many emotions and moods, it is amazing to think how just a bunch of tunes can change up our feelings regarding a certain event. How we associate certain songs to certain memories because they were heard with certain people, certain events that happened in our life. Evidence suggests that listening to music may help brain cells process information more efficiently and may facilitate the brain’s ability to adapt.
Written by - Vidita Sachdeva
From historical accounts it is clear that the power to move people has always been attributed to music; its ecstatic possibilities have been recognized in all cultures and have usually been admitted in practice under particular conditions, sometimes stringent ones. In India, music has been put into the service of religion from earliest times; Vedic hymns stand at the beginning of the record. As the art developed over many centuries into a music of profound melodic and rhythmic intricacy, the discipline of a religious text or the guideline of a story determined the structure.
What is the Effect of Music on Emotions?
The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music. The chills you feel when you hear a particularly moving piece of music may be the result of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that triggers sensations of pleasure and well-being. As your brain becomes familiar with a particular song, your body may release dopamine upon hearing just the first few notes of the song.
Interestingly, music can affect our mood even if we can’t recognize or replicate the notes and rhythm. 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. Researchers noted that these patients had sustained damage to the temporal lobes of the brain, a region involved in comprehending melody; their frontal lobes, which play a role in emotional regulation, were unaffected.
The mental processes involved in knitting individual sounds together into the overall perception of a song is quite similar to the process the brain goes through in reading, which involves first recognizing individual letters and sounds and then ultimately gleaning meaning from sentences and paragraphs. Working memory is involved in both processes, and scientists believe there’s a great deal of overlap between working memory for musical stimuli and for verbal stimuli.
Emotions, of course, enhance memory. Most adults can still recall every word of the songs they loved in high school – largely because adolescence is a time of heightened emotion. (The fact that most of us played those songs over and over also helps because if something is repeated a certain number of times it goes from being in your short - term memory to your long - term memory instead and stays there for a long long time).
It is even used in Pain Therapy, where Vibroacoustic therapy uses low frequency sound to produce vibrations that are applied directly to the body. At least seven scientific studies have shown improvement in motor function in individuals with cerebral palsy treated with vibroacoustic therapy.
The Bottom Line
Music can make us feel so many emotions and moods, it is amazing to think how just a bunch of tunes can change up our feelings regarding a certain event. How we associate certain songs to certain memories because they were heard with certain people, certain events that happened in our life. Evidence suggests that listening to music may help brain cells process information more efficiently and may facilitate the brain’s ability to adapt.
Written by - Vidita Sachdeva
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