Why do we love “Music”?
By: Arshitha Karthikeyan
Tags: Songs, Music, Musicismedicine, Enjoy, Happy

For a good measure, playing music & musical instruments does the same to you. Let’s tune into the listening part first. Hearing or listening to music just doesn’t rest on your ears, it presses on the keys of mood. Yes ! Either you switch to the mood of the song or you level up the mood that you already are in. We can easily spot this super quick reaction when a child smiles and begins to dance to a rhythm even if it was crying its lungs out. So yeah, the question is Why does it stop crying ?!

Listening to music can create peak emotions, which increase the amount of DOPAMINE. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is produced in the brain that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. If there were a celebrity among the brain chemicals, it would be dopamine. This dopamine is stereotyped to be linked with salacious stories of sex, drugs and addiction. It isn’t a ‘pleasure chemical’ but a ‘pleasure of satisfaction, pleasure of accomplishment, pleasure of attention and pleasure of reward’. But yes excessive dopamine will take you to addiction.

Cupcakes could be as addictive as cocaine.

We often say and hear that emotions are experienced from our heart, but an enormous part of emotional stimulus is communicated through the brain. Thereupon, dopamine is involved in our cognitive, emotional and behavioral functioning & clearly it is the brain that plays the emotions.

What if i say that this epic scene didn’t hit me hard? I should have watched it on mute. Let’s take another example. We scream in joy when we see couple exchange rings or when it is an intro scene of the hero or the BGM roll that makes us feel huge and powerful. All these are stimulated due to dopamine in the brain with the help of music. As simple as that.

Next-door is memory. The movie “Alive Inside” depicts how music can assist in regaining parts of memory and improve the brain’s health of Alzheimer’s patients. An elderly man in a wheelchair, his head droops down to his chest, almost in a state of unconsciousness. His name is Henry and sadly, is disconnected from the world due to Alzheimer’s. One of the caretakers in Henry’s nursing home asked to his family about the type of music Henry used to enjoy before it affected him. By creating playlist using specific music for Henry, the caretaker helped him to associate emotionally salient episodic memories that are triggered by familiar songs to brighten his mood. Henry’s eyes open, he is aware and he is able to communicate at the end. He was reconnected to his life from the music — his music.

Moving on, I love to study with music. I even love to workout with music. I even dream with music. This obligation has increased my Neuroplasticity and learning abilities. Neuroplasticity is the reorganizing ability of brain forming new connections throughout life. To further clarify, when our brain is damaged, it can find or create new pathways to function properly. Amazingly, music can provide stimuli to create these new pathways and help to rewire itself. For example — when you aren’t sure of the lyrics of a song, you tend to hum the tune in your head and in due course you might find the words of the song. Here knowing the song lyrics is a pathway that you already know. But it has been damaged due to some reason and you create new pathway to recollect it using its tune.

Studying with music on has become a cliche. However, it has been interpreted in a wrong way by most. People just turn on any music while they study. Ergo, they get distracted more often rather than being focused. It is because music also affects attention in a greater way. This exactly states that listening to instrumental music or beats without lyrics will only help you to be focused. Different categories of music have different impacts on your attention.