How Music Affects Emotion, Intelligence, and Health

There are many specific reasons why music therapy works. Music with a strong beat can actually cause brainwaves to “resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state.” (Scott) This can be good for you even after you stop listening, because it helps the brain in changing brainwave speed by itself later.

Researchers at the University of Toronto are developing “brain wave music” (”Brain Wave Music”), a type of music therapy that involves creating music that imitates the patterns formed by individual brain waves. The people they test the music on are given their own CD, with music made for their specific brain waves. They’re hoping that this new approach may help relieve chronic insomnia, anxiety, or depression, even without the additional aid (and risk of dependency) of medication. Could you imagine going to the doctors to get a “prescription CD?”

In addition to causing positive changes in heart and breathing rates, bringing relaxation, and combating stress problems, music also brings a “positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay.” (Scott)

Music and Physical Activity

Mark Tramo, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, commented on a study which “showed that the heart muscle of people exercising on treadmills didn’t work as hard when people listened to music as it did when they exercised in silence.” (qtd. in Cromie, “Music on the Brain”) Researchers from Ohio State University studied patients with lung disease and found that those who listened to music “walked an average of 19 miles a week – four more miles than the control group who didn’t listen to music while walking.” (Bumgardner) Music affects us so much that it’s being banned from sports-related activities.

Most high schools have banned listening to music while running in both track practices and meets. The body in charge of running in the US, USA Track & Field, has officially banned headphones and any kind of portable music player from all official races. One reason to justify this is the physical protection of the runners; while listening to music, they can’t hear directions, and are less aware of the other runners around them. However, this is also meant to protect runners without an audio player from having an unfair disadvantage. But isn’t it fair enough for every participant to be allowed to run with an audio player? If everyone has the opportunity to give themselves an advantage through music, then it’s not unfair simply because some don’t bring an audio player. Not all should be punished.
With today’s iPods and Zunes becoming progressively smaller, how can this rule be enforced? Many people ignore the new rules, including Richie Sais, a runner in California’s Marine Corps Marathon. “‘I dare them to find the iPod on me,’ he said, adding that he had clipped his iPod shuffle, which is barely larger than a quarter, under his shirt.” (qtd. in Macur)

More and more “regular” people are participating in these types of athletic activities. The more serious and professional runners may actually prefer to run without music, but those running for fun or smaller personal goals might be turned off by these music bans. I know when I was in high school I wouldn’t have made it through summer gym without Sean Paul and Aerosmith.

Conclusion

Music is invariably a crucial part of everyone’s life, and has shaped the way we all live and develop as humans. If used in the right ways, it can help us learn, heal, or even make it through that last lap around the track. We still have so much to find out about the way our minds interpret music and how if effects us. Hopefully elementary and high schools will continue music programs, and post-secondary institutions will continue to research what else music can do for us.