Music on the brain: Listening can influence our brain activity

Zoom

People have long tried to use music as a tool to enhance their abilities. Soldiers sang songs when marching into battle, sailors sang songs on long journeys, and cloth makers sang when weaving. But do we have evidence that music makes a difference to any of our businesses?

We have only recently begun to ask this question scientifically. It started with the Mozart effect, which seemed to link classical music to improved mental performance. Named after the famous composer, it was shorthand for the apparent boost in IQ tests that people listening to his music experienced. But the phenomenon turned out not to be real. “The background music was designed to help with work. [It was] discovered that it was the noise that kept the person from being distracted,” says Professor Concetta Tomaino, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurological Function.

However, research into music and its effects on human abilities continued and eventually led to the discovery of an effect called brain entrainment, which appears to be able to improve memory, concentration, sleep and physical activity.

The technique involves manipulating some of the waves of activity that are part of normal brain behavior. We discovered five types of brain waves: alpha, beta, theta, delta and gamma. David Sonnenschein, founder of iQsonics, a company that develops tools for children with autism, says alpha waves mark resting states and beta waves are for waking consciousness. However, their effects also overlap; Tomaino says "gamma and beta waves help with attention and theta and delta waves help with sleep."

In theory, you can adjust the difference in musical frequency to stimulate the activity of one of these brain waves. "Essentially, brain entrainment is the production of specific brain patterns from certain types of music that have a specific phase difference," says Sonnenschein, whose tools for children with autism are based on this idea. Brain training works by asking a person to listen to music with two different frequencies using headphones. "You can have music at 408Hz and music at 400Hz, it makes a difference," Sonnenschein said, "and that difference is the frequency of the brainwaves you produce in the brain."

Beyond these frequency effects, the exact benefits of different types of music are still hotly debated. Some researchers suspect that brain training has a very strong effect regardless of the type of music. This group includes Adam Shea-Hewett, who has worked on using music to enhance human abilities for nearly two decades and is co-founder of Evoked Response, a company that provides music that she says improves individual abilities.

However, there are others, like Mari Tervaniemi, research director at the Center of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain at the University of Helsinki, who differ. “In most cases, it is favorite music that is beneficial – beneficial for changing emotional state. Positive emotions can then also help improve cognition. It depends on what music the person likes,” a- she told Ars. However, she cautions that there are very few studies of South America or Africa, so any cultural differences in how music is enjoyed remains unexplored. p>

Music itself is proven to matter. A study in 50 volunteers used brain training that stimulated theta brain waves, but used different means to do so: either white noise or music. A simple memory test showed that those who listen to music saw their performance increase much more.

However, everyone we spoke to agrees that music has an effect. But how big is this effect and how long does it last? This is a question that researchers have been wrestling with for some time.

Research indicates that the effects can be wide ranging, from improving memory to increasing attention. However, these effects do not last forever. Tervaniemi and Tomaino say you can use it for one or two sessions throughout the day. More than that and you'd adapt to the music, limiting its effect.

There are data on the duration of changes after exposure to music. Music produced by Evoked Response has been shown to increase focus in an attention-based task, and the effect appears to last long after the music is stopped. "We don't know how long the effects last, but there has been improvement over...