The Effects of Music on the Brain

Put on some headphones, crank up the tunes, and what do you get? Your fingers and toes begin to tap. A bob of the head and shoulders may occur. Pretty soon, you’ll be clapping along, dancing, and singing along. Now your body is following along with the music.

There is no doubt that music affects us physically, but understanding how it interacts with our brain requires deep study and curiosity about the inner workings of the mind. As a result, music can play an essential role in developing the brain, learning, mood, and even health. In this article, we will take a look at some of the effects of different music on the brain.

Enhanced Creativity by Ambient Noise

Apparently, creativity is best stimulated by a moderate level of noise. We seem to get more creative when we are exposed to ambient noise rather than low decibel levels.

Essentially, moderate noise levels promote abstract processing, thereby increasing creativity. Basically, when we find it difficult to process things as normal, we turn toward more creative methods.

We have difficulty processing information efficiently when we are overwhelmed by high noise levels, however.

Music Can Help You When Gambling

Music can also help you remember things and improve your recall while playing casino games. When playing online tournaments for long periods of time, can be a huge advantage. It is difficult to read your opponents when you play online poker on sites like www.IndiaCasinos.com because you cannot physically see them.

You can, however, still gain an advantage by keeping track of how certain players react in different situations. To utilize this information, you will need a great memory. It can be helpful to listen to music to improve your memory as well as give you a slight edge over your opponents.

Music Taste is Linked to Personality

Despite this study only being tested on young adults, this is still quite intriguing. Study results show that listening to each other’s favorite songs was a fairly reliable tool for predicting personality traits in couples.

It was interesting to find that some traits can be accurately predicted based on people’s listening habits, while others cannot. This is a breakdown of some of the connections they have made:

• There is a high sense of self-esteem among blues fans; they are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease with themselves
  
• Classical music fans are creative, introverted, and confident
  
• Outgoing and high self-esteem are characteristics of rap fans
  
• There is a lot of hard work and outgoing energy among country and western fans
  
• Reggae fans are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and relaxed
  
• The fans of rock/heavy metal have a low sense of self-worth and are not hard-working nor outgoing, gentle, and relaxed.
  

Visual Attention can be Improved by Classical Music

Music training or exposure can benefit people of all ages. In one small study, classical music improved the visual attention of stroke patients.

It’s important to do further research to validate the conclusions from this study, but it is really interesting how noise and music can affect other senses and abilities, such as vision.

Exercise is Made Easier With Music

Music’s effects on exercise have been studied for years. Music-listening cyclists pedal faster than silent cyclists, according to a 1911 study by Leonard Ayres.

The reason for this is that listening to music can mask our brain’s cries for tiredness. Whenever our bodies sense that we are tired and need a break, they signal the brain to stop. When we listen to music, our brain competes to focus on it, and we have a better chance of overriding those signals of fatigue, though this works best for low- and moderate-intensity workouts. In high-intensity exercise, music doesn’t have the same ability to distract our brain from pain as it does during lower-intensity exercise.

Listening to music allows us to exercise longer and harder even when we are in pain, as well as use our energy more efficiently. It has been found that cyclists who listen to music require 7% less oxygen to perform the same tasks as those who cycle in silence based on a 2012 study.