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Music effects on the Human Brain and Behaviour

Article · January 2021

DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.14038973.v1

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 January 14th, 2021

Music effects on the human brain and

behaviour
by
Wassily Almasidis

One of the oldest instruments that were excavated is dated at least 40,000 years old
and it is a ute shaped instrument. It is somewhat safe to assume that music in the form of
rhythm or singing even predates that. Later, in ancient Greece, it was believed that music
had ethos, meaning, it could in uence the emotional state and the behaviour of the listener
(Weiss and Taruskin 2008). Music is now unique to the humankind, has always been
present and can be found, in some form at least, in all civilisations, just like language. So,
it seems that even though music might not have any direct impact on our survival, for
some reason humans co-developed with music with the latter having, under certain
conditions, great positive impact on us like in a case where a patient with severe dementia
listens to their favourite music and they suddenly light up and start remembering things
from their childhood (World Science Festival 2015). We have similar ndings where music
helps people with Parkinson’s disease who’s ability to walk has been impacted to walk
easier and faster.
This essay’s goal is to explore this deep interconnection between certain brain structures
and music and its effects on behaviour which is a relatively novel eld of study. The brain
structure considered will be primarily the prefrontal cortex but due to the complex
neurocircuitry of the brain regarding music, other regions will be brie y mentioned as well
that are typically impacted by musical training such as the frontal cortex. It will,
furthermore, explore the use of music as a form of therapy in Parkinson's and Alzheimer’s
disease. Finally, there will be an examination of the long term bene ts and the transferable
skills of musical training supported by relative studies.

If we could summarise the biological effects of learning music on the brain we can
con dently describe it as a full-brain exercise simply because the entire brain is involved
(Johns Hopkins Medicine 2019; Wu 2018). Similarly, from a behavioural perspective
listening to our favourite songs triggers several parts of the brain related to emotion and as
a result we get some psychophysiological responses such as crying, frisson (also known as
musical chills) and euphoria. These have been studied and con rmed numerous times in
neuroscience experiments with the appreciable help of functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) where the participants would be
asked to perform a musical piece or listen to music while being in the machine. One
particular study by Alluri et al. (2012) con rmed exactly that. The participants were
listening to a music stimulus while being in an fMRI scanner and the generated images

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showed a very wide activity in brain circuitries responsible for motor control, cognitive
functions but also the limbic system as well. This is strongly suggesting the high
psychological involvement of listening to music. 

The frontal lobe (FL) and particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), part of FL, is the last
brain region to fully mature and it does not get fully developed until around the age of 25,
where the myelination of neurons is nally complete (Sharma et al. 2013). For
psychologists, the FL is one of the most interesting structures to study and might be the
most studied one. That is because we can con dently say that the PFC is sort of a higher
brain which plays a major role in our sense of self and in controlling behaviour (Wu 2018).
From a functional perspective, it serves for the higher mental operations such as executive
functions, postponed grati cation, concentration, top-down processing, inhibitory control
and other high order activities. For example, when someone tries to focus in top-down
processing, meaning voluntary intentional attention focusing, the FL is the primary
operator that helps us focus our attention on a particular task (Kalat 2019). Listening to
music has direct impact on the PFL and can elicit idiosyncratic depended emotions
(Montinaro 2010). One study made by Bigliassi et al. (2015) suggests that the PFC plays a
role in musical interpretation and emotional processing. They observed the participants’
brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while they were
listening to calm and motivational music. They found that music that is generally
considered motivational, induced greater activation in the PFC and a decreased activity in
the parasympathetic nervous system causing arousal and excitement. 

Music itself, cannot probably be viewed as an exclusive treatment for any sort of physical
or mental disorder but its effect on the neuroplasticity of the nerve cells can be a key non-
pharmacological way in a case of brain injury where a speci c brain area is damaged, for
example (Johns Hopkins Medicine 2019). What is more interesting to mention is that
researchers like Koelsch et al. (2011) went even further and tested if music can affect the
physiology of patients while they undergo surgery under the lighter sedation of spinal
anaesthesia where the patients could just barely reply to commands. It was a well designed
double-blind experiment and they found that patients who were exposed to musical stimuli
during the operation had about 20% lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their
blood and needed about 15% less sedative than the patients in the control group.

Although the exact way music affects the brain is not yet fully understood, the researchers
of this study theorized that these ndings could be due to three main reasons. The rst
suggestion is that the activation of certain dopaminergic pathways followed by the release
of the neurotransmitter dopamine had a pleasurable effect. Dopamine release can have an
analgesic effect, sometimes referred to as audioanalgesia if it is music-induced, which
lowers the pain perception to a certain extend as Garza-Villarreal et al. (2014) describes.
The activation of the reward system by music is very well scienti cally substantiated
through the years by different independent researches and is further con rmed by a more
recent study as well by Ferreri et al. (2019). The second suggested reason for this positive
effect might be due to the high distractibility of music. Cognitive distraction by music is
also a potent way to lower the pain perception as researched by Mitchell et al. (2006),
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 where they compared distractibility by preferred music, humour and mathematics with
music outperforming the rest. This is probably because listening to music activates
numerous parts of the brain’s processing regions, hence the result of distraction. Finally,
the third assumption is that music has been shown to top-down regulate emotion by
engaging regions of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as the PFC.
In a top-down regulation, the regions of higher cognitive functions such as the PFC are
engaged, in this case by music (Brattico 2015). More speci cally, when music is
considered to be pleasant it increases the blood ow in the PFC. As a consequence, the
amygdala, which controls the ight or ght response and plays a role in the stress response,
has lower blood ow which lowers stress levels. This research only adds to the promising
applicability of music as a physiological and cognitive enhancer. 

Furthermore, movement and musical rhythm are jointly linked to one another (TEDx Talks
2013). As aforementioned, some applications of music are being researched, like music
therapy, in treating people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's disease to ease their symptoms
and improve their psychological well-being. In certain cases music, but more speci cally
the rhythm of the music can have a remarkable effect on people who have, for instance,
great dif culty in moving due to the neurodegenerative nature of the diseases. The simple
act of putting some music on has an immediate impact on a parkinsonian. As Sacks (2012)
inferred, one reason a parkinsonian progressively loses their ability to move is that the
disorder impacts a brain region that gives a sense of rhythm to them, that is why they move
too fast, too slow or not at all. The nerve cells of the impacted brain regions, substantia
nigra and the basal ganglia degenerate causing the motor control and movement signals not
to get through. It seems that when playing or listening to music the motor control
messages are carried out by different neural pathways bypassing the damaged ones. This
correlated phenomenon can be observed in people with speech disorders, such as
stuttering, where the struggling is reduced or even completely disappears when they sing
songs instead of talking because a different area of the brain is responsible for processing
singing and different for talking (Wan et al. 2010).

In acute Parkinson’s cases, the patients are not able to move or talk. Listening to music
though has a unique emancipating effect on a parkinsonian and is universally seen to all
such patients (Sacks 2012). As a result, we can see patients who could not move suddenly
not only moving but dancing, as if they freed themselves from Parkinsonism for the
duration of the music piece. One severe case of a parkinsonian that illustrates the impact
of music, as described by Sacks (2007) is a patient that when she was young she knew all
Chopin pieces from memory but since she diseased she would spent much of her time in a
certain position, unresponsive. When someone would say to her ‘Opus 49’, she did not
even had to be at the piano to play it. She would light up, also her electroencephalogram
(EEG), and play the piece mentally and for the time that the piece would last she was
transformed and responsive. Memory associated with music could still engage her neural
activity.
Additionally, prescription music has been postulated that in Alzheimer’s patients can
signi cantly reduce the agitation (Ziv et al. 2007; Gerdner and Schoenfelder 2010). A
similar study by Hebert et al. (2018) describes music as an effective therapeutic tool to
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 control behavioural symptoms in dementia patients. Similarly, Ziv et al. (2007) also
suggests that background music has direct positive impact on Alzheimer’s patients
behaviour by minimizing their negative symptoms related to agitation and also by
improving their recollection of past memories. Music is virtually a risk-free, non-
pharmaceutical way that is both inexpensive to implement and requires little to no training
for the medical staff.
However, the negative side, is that the healing effect of music, in most of these these
cases, is not so permanent. When the music stops, the patients would almost immediately
return to their previous state.

Moreover, the evidence about the positive effects of music listening and musical training
respectively seem to be quite strong. Already in 1904, the father of modern neuroscience,
Santiago Ramón y Cajal tried to comprehend how can a pianist, after years of practice,
have such ne motor control (Steele and Zatorre 2018). So, he inferred the ability of the
neurons to rewire between them by creating additional axonic terminals. This process is
now known as neuroplasticity. His hypothesis was substantiated with the recent advent of
neuroimaging. Psychologists and neuroscientists love studying the brains of musicians
because they can observe physical brain differences compared to non-musicians. Evidence
suggests that musical training, especially when started from a young age, can increase the
cortical thickness. A longitudinal study by Hudziak et al. (2014) con rmed this by testing
young individuals over several years. Increased cortical thickness can have great
development bene ts in coordination, motivation, mathematical processing and generally
cognitive ability (Schlaug et al. 2005).
There is, of course, the differential hypothesis suggesting that is not musical training that
promotes brain regions to grow but these brain dissimilarities between musicians and non-
musicians are pre-existing, normally by genetic predisposition causing these individuals to
choose to learn music as Kalat (2019) describes, so we have a reversal of cause and effect.

To conclude, the immense power of music and the mechanism of how mere sound waves
of different frequencies, can have such an in uence on our daily lives is remarkable, and
up to a point, not yet entirely understood. Humans co-evolved with music through the
years, it is present in all civilisations, so it might be the case that our brains, all other
things being equal, are hardwired for music, to create it and to nd joy in it. A musical
piece can improve our mood, motivate or make us cry. Music has been proven positively
impact the behaviour of people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in a respectful,
non-intrusive way while provided in person-centred care approach. For people with
dementia listening to a particular song can resurface memories by engaging some deep
neural networks. Lastly, musical training is not only an ideal method to keep a
behaviourally healthy functioning brain but evidently a way to enhance its function in
problem-solving, focusing attention and promote lifelong neuroplasticity. Over the
centuries, many great philosophers and scientists wrote about the impact of music on us.
With the advent of new technologies and the interdisciplinary evidence synthesis of
diverse studies, we are nally able to shed some light on this remarkable in uence of
music.

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