Why Music?

“Music is the soundtrack of our lives”
This quote has been accredited to Dick Clark, Tavis Smiley, Nathan East, and even Michael Jackson. Scientifically, there are so many benefits to music that it should be a staple of our everyday routines.

Benefits of Music:
1. Music Helps With Concentration & Memory
A study conducted by the research team at Stanford Medical Center demonstrated that music occupies the regions of the brain that are linked to attentiveness, making forecasts, and updating the occasion in memory. The researchers stated that “listening to music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication.”

2. Music Alleviates Stress
Listening to music reduces the amount of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the body. “This is one reason why music is associated with relaxation,” says Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, who studies the neuroscience of music at McGill University in Montreal.

3. Music Promotes Health & Healing
An amplified amount of natural killer cells, which attack harmful bacteria and germs, are created while listening to music. The body’s immune system function is then improved. Dr. Levitin and his research fellow, Dr. Mona Lisa Chanda, examined over 400 independent studies that led to this conclusion.

4. Music Enhances Exercise
Playing music with a faster tempo while you work out can up your pace and distance traveled. Sport Psychologist, C.I. Karageorghis, conducted a study that found music can assistance athletic performance in two ways: it can either suspend fatigue or surge work capacity. According to this study, the effects of music lead to “higher-than-expected levels of endurance, power, productivity, or strength.”

5. Music Boosts Creativity
Professor Petri Toiviainen from the University of Jyväskylä states, “Our results show for the first time how different musical features activate emotional, motor and creative areas of the brain.” Their study was published in the journal NeuroImage. In an article published by The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley titled ‘How Music Helps Us Be More Creative’, Jill Suttie shares that “a new study suggests that listening to happy music promotes more divergent thinking—a key element of creativity.” Divergent thinking is defined as thinking that moves away in diverging directions so as to involve a variety of aspects and which sometimes lead to novel ideas and solutions; associated with creativity. (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/divergent+thinking)

6. Music Motivates Positive Social Interaction
Nottingham University Hospitals nurse, Jacqueline Craig, discovered that music therapy even helped to increase social interaction. Professor Glenn Schellenberg, Department of Psychology at U of T Mississauga, would also support this idea. ““One of the important factors in our study was the impact of group music lessons in particular,” says Schellenberg. “In introducing the social aspect there seems to be a motivation to provide support for others and a willingness to receive help from peers. It may be the social aspect engendered by the lessons, but also that sense of collaboration and cooperation.”

These are only six of the numerous ways that music plays such a beautiful, healthy, powerful part in our lives. For a daily boost, both A Ran Music Service and researchers agree, music just may be part of the answer.

 

Photo Credit: https://www.finerminds.com/happiness/why-express-yourself-through-music?utm_source=finerminds