Music for

the brain

By Kerene Anglin
 The Brain
• Has 4 lobes-
– Frontal lobes
• Prefrontal Lobe (planning & thinking)
– Temporal lobes (sound, music, object, face recognition)
– Occipital lobes (visual processing)
– Parietal lobes (spatial orientation, calculation)
The Brain Function
Other areas of the brain that help in
brain function
•Between the Parietal lobes and Frontal
lobes are 2 bands
•Motor Cortex- controls body
movement
•Somatosensory- processes touch
signals received from body parts
The Brain Inside
The Neuron Function
Dendrites brings information to the
cell body and axons take
information away from the
cell body.

• Information from one

neuron flows to another
neuron across a synapse.
Neuron Function
How your brain listens
• Noise sends vibrations, or
sound waves, through the air.
• The human eardrum is a stretched
membrane, like the skin of a drum.
When the sound waves hit your eardrum,
it vibrates and the brain interprets these
vibrations as sound.
• Music is sounds that are carried to the ear by
changes in air pressure.
• Different cells in the cochlea respond to
pitch, melody,, timbre, harmony.
 How your brain listens
• When you hear a piece of music,
the ear converts the sound waves into
vibrations in specific parts of the inner
and middle ear.

• These vibrations are then translated into action potentials

that travel through the eighth cranial nerve to the brain
stem, the thalamus, and the auditory cortex in the
temporal lobe

• Information from the auditory cortex is transmitted to the

frontal lobe which associates the sound of music with
these varying patterns of impulses that generate
thoughts, feelings, and stimulates emotions and past
experiences.
How your brain listens

• The inner ear contains a spiral sheet that

pluck like a guitar string at the sound of
music
• The plucking triggers the brain cells that
includes the hearing parts of your brain
regions (auditory systems: cochlea)
• The Brain decode the pattern in sounds
before it decide what the sound is.
How your brain listens
• It seems that the brain takes a song and
translates it into it's own neurosymphony-
sending electrical impulses to various
parts of your brain. It sounds almost as
though we store various different patterns
of these impulses in our brains and when
the same pattern of sounds matches a
pattern of impulses, it triggers a set of
images.
 Music

• Music
– stimulates and utilizes most parts of the
brain
– Music and art involves both right and left
hemispheres of the brain because while
one codifies lyrics the other tackles melody.
– Thus, the human brain shows specialization
and large scale involvement in music
Music Influence
• Alter heart rate
• Breathing
• Blood pressure
• Pain threshold
• Muscle movements
The Biology of Music
• Different Networks of neurons are
activated depending on whether a
person is listening or performing
music.
• Music stimulates specific regions of
the brain responsible for memory,
motor control, timing and language.
 Music & The Brain
• It makes sense then that music has
the ability to generate emotions and
memories, it actually stirs these sections of
the brain.
• Music stimulates and exercises the entire
brain
• Arts & Music enhances cognitive growth,
human development, emotional and
psychomotor pathways.
• The effects of experience on the brain are of
equal importance for understanding the
important role of music in behavior and
cognitive processes
 Music & The Brain
• Research has shown that brain synapses
grow stronger through use and are
weakened through disuse.
• Learning music
– Exercise the brain by strengthening the
synapses between brain cells.
– Activates the entire cerebral cortex while
musicians are playing
– Improves cognitive domains
such as mathematics & reading
 Music & The Brain
• There is indication that music affects
levels of various hormones,, such as:
• cortisol (arousal & stress),
• testosterone (arousal &aggression),
• oxytocin (nurturing behavior) &
• triggering endorphins
 Music & Art

• Extensive study has shown that both in

the developing brain and adult brain,
experience alters brain function
• The connections between brain cells
and the very operation of brain cells
themselves is altered by what we sense,
think and do.
• Brains are shaped by experiences in a
physical manner, with resultant changes in
brain function.
Music facilitates learning
• musical responses are widely
distributed throughout the brain
• Research shows that the structure of
music and people's use of it are
similar in key respects to language
structure and use
Music & arts uses:
 Music & arts uses:
Left Hemisphere
• left-brain region for letters and words
• highly verbal
• primarily a sequential learner
• time conscious,
• all-or-none (outcome) oriented,
• prefers logical and analytical thinking,
• Rational language, mathematics,
abstraction and reasoning Memory
stored in a language format
Music & arts uses:
• Right Hemisphere
– right-brain region for notes and musical scores & passages
– Not easily able to express experiences in verbal form
– Excellent spatial memory & highly developed sensory
(spatial) recall.
– adapt to synthesis and intuitive processing

• Holistic Functioning: processing multi-sensory

input simultaneously to provide "holistic" picture of
one's environment.
• Visual spatial skills. Holistic functions (dancing
and gymnastics are coordinated by the right
hemisphere) Memory is stored in auditory, visual and
spatial modalities.
 Music & art
• The strength of connections between
brain cells (called "synapses") is
altered
• Activity in synapses can strengthen
them
• lack of activity can weaken them
• brain activity can produce new
synapses
Major components of the
human brain/mind:
– Sensory and Perceptual (e.g., auditory, visual, tactile,
kinesthetic)
– Cognitive: (e.g., symbolic, linguistic, reading)
– Planning Movements (e.g., organizing a sequence of
muscle actions)
– Motor: (e.g., fine muscle and gross muscle
coordination)
– Feedback/Evaluation (e.g., hearing if one played the
correct notes)
– Motivational (e.g., determination to study hard)
– Learning (e.g., acquiring new information or a motor
skill)
– Memory (e.g., long term storage and use of new
information and skills)
Music & arts:
• Which of these brain systems and processes are
heavily used in music, whether in singing,
drawing or in playing a musical instrument?
• music arts engages all of these components.
• music performance provides a complete
mind/brain "workout"
• This workout should facilitate inter-
communications between cells by strengthening
synapses, thus improving brain function
• Include-Transfer effects from music to other
academic subjects
Transfer effects
• Example - Music facilitates learning to
read
– Result from listening for changes in pitch in
music
– Promotes
• the ability to sound out new words
• Speech sounds
• Art facilitates learning to create 3-D
drawings
– Promotes the ability to use spatial and visual
modalities
Triune brain theory
• suggests that the human brain is
really three brains in one
• The smallest part
– 5% of the brain,
– the reticular formation
• the gateway for most sensory input and is
devoted to maintaining the operation of
automatic body process, such as
respiration and heartbeat. It is also the seat
of habitual or automatic behavior.
 Triune brain theory
• The second part, the limbic system
– 10% of the brain
– seat of the emotions, certain kinds of
memory, and glandular control
• The largest part, the cerebral cortex
– 85% of the brain
– devoted to higher order thinking
processes
Music & arts:
• The limbic system
– facilitate or inhibit learning and higher
order thinking.
– Positive emotions can facilitate higher
order thinking skills whereas
– Negative emotions, such as anger,
hostility, and fear, can literally downshift
the brain to basic survival thinking
Utilizing music and art
Music
• can lower stress, boost learning when used 3 different
ways:
– as a carrier - using melody or beat to encode content 
– as arousal - to calm down or energize
– as a primer - to prepare specific pathways for learning
content) impacts the immune system, and is an energy source
for the brain

Art:
• provides many learners with avenues of expression and emotional
conduits for learning and retaining information
• Is important in technology to aesthetically create pleasing power
point presentations and multi-media displays to showcase work
• Multicultural awareness is improved through the study of art. Due
to the diverse power of art, some educators think the “arts” should
be named as the fourth “R.”
Utilizing music and art
• This quality of complexity stimulates brain activity
in the frontal lobes and between the right and left
hemispheres.
• Knowing how to play an instrument furthers this
increase in brain function-
• Research has shown that musicians have much
more dense fibers in the corpus callosum than
non-musicians, and this allows for much better
special intelligence (recognition of abstract and
spatial forms and constructs) among other things.
• Musicians further process music equally in both
hemispheres, unlike non-musicians who mostly
only "hear" music with half their brain.
Utilizing music and art
• Children with music training had
significantly better verbal memory
than their counterparts without
training.
• The longer the training, the better the
verbal memory
 Research
• Researchers studied 90 boys between age 6 and 15.
– 45 had musical training in the school’s string orchestra
program,
– The other 45 participants had no musical training
– Gave the children verbal memory tests
– Musically trained students recalled significantly more words
than the untrained
– After 30 minutes delays the trained students also retained
more words than the control group

• Verbal learning performance rose in proportion to the duration of

musical training
• Researchers say, even fewer than six years of musical training
can boost verbal memory
• More training = “greater extent of cortical reorganization in the left
temporal region”
• Students with better verbal memory probably will find it easier to
learn in school”
Research
• Follow-up
– 45 orchestra students.
– Thirty-three boys were still in the program;
– 9 had dropped out
– compared a third group of 17 children This beginner’s
group initially had shown significantly lower verbal-
learning ability than the more musically experienced
boys. However, one year later, these newer students
again showed significant improvement in verbal
learning.
• The dropouts showed no further improvement
however, they didn’t lose their verbal memory
advantage they gained before stopping the
lessons
Research • Chan propose that music
training during childhood is
a kind of sensory
stimulation that “somehow
contributes to the
reorganization-better
development of the left
temporal lobe in musicians
• It is noted that it is too
simplistic to divide brain
functions (such as music)
strictly into left or right,
because “our brain works
like a network system, it is
interconnected, very co-
operative
Benefits of music & arts in
the Classroom
• Music & art:
– day more interesting = more learning
– promote a higher order of thinking skills
– provides a way to imagine, create and
contribute to self-expression and creativity
– provides perceptual motor development
– encourages teamwork and individuality
– fosters discipline and commitment
– Math and science tend to be stronger in
students who have a music or an arts
background.
Benefits of music & arts in
the Classroom
• Music & Arts:
– Encourages growth of cognitive and emotional
psychomotor pathways
– Enhances the quality of human expressions
– Attention to nuance
– Enhance recall, visual cues, imagery,
attention, concentration and dexterity
– Encourages hands on experience
– Activates all parts of the brain
– Stimulation, allows mental retention
Benefits of music & arts
• The benefits conveyed by music
education can be grouped in four
categories:
• Success in society
• Success in school
• Success in developing intelligence
• Success in life
Benefits of music
• Researchers are now using music as
a therapeutic tool to rehabilitate
stroke patients through Melodic
Intonation therapy.
• This allows them to speak & sing.
 What has the art of neuroscience
told us about the arts and learning?
• The brain physically changes
when we learn.
• And that change is most
extensive and powerful when
emotion is part of the learning.
• The chemicals of emotion
(adrenalin, serotonin, and
dopamine) act by modification of
synapses.
• The modification of synapses is
the very root of learning.
Changing connections in the
brain is learning.
What has the art of neuroscience
told us about the arts and learning?

• the arts and music trigger emotion.

• Artists create things that engage
others, emotionally. And, of course
creating itself is engaging—the
artist also feels emotion. The arts,
then, change the brain of both the
creator, and the consumer.
What has the art of neuroscience
told us about the arts and learning?
• Another thing that changes
synapses in the brain is Practice.
We learn the things that we
repeat the most.
• But we repeat the things that we
enjoy. So we enjoy the arts and
repeat them over and over. This
intensity of effort and focus is
healthy for learning.
• It also changes the brain.
Conclusions
• children inherently have considerable musical
competency
• children spontaneously engage in musical play
and clearly attend to and enjoy art
• children exhibit cognitive and academic benefits
from music and art education
• music performance is very likely to be a premier
activity for facilitating brain function
• The arts connect learning experiences to the
world of everyday work.
• A human brain is about the quality of one's life.
The arts are very central to the spirit and the
quality of our lives.
References
• Chaudhuri, T. (2002). A little thinking music. Serendip. Retrieved from
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/tchaudhuri.htm
l
• Zull, J. (2005). Arts, Neuroscience, and Learning. New Horizons for
Learning. Retrieved from http://www.newhorizons.org
• Vaidya, G. Music, Emotion and the Brain. Retrieved from
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web2/gvaidya.html
• Chan, T., Petrie, G. ( 1998) The Brain and Well-Designed School
Environments:Enhancing Student. Classroom Leadership 2,3.
Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/teachexperience/braik030312.html
• Fernandez, E. (2006). Notes on the Brain: Does music make you
smarter? Miami Herald. April 25, 2006.
• Cromie, W. (1997). How Your Brain Listens to Music. Retrieved from
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/11.13/HowYourBrainLis.htm
l