Music affects your brain chemistry. We know that music can alter your mood and change how we feel in and about certain situations. We already know that listening to music increases the amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine, but we are starting to learn that it has a much bigger impact.
In the last few decades, scientists have developed many new findings. We have started to learn more and more about how music affects us. We now know how music affects us as a whole, but how about in the brain specifically?
Neuroscientists use fMRI’s and PET scans to evaluate the activity of the brain when listening to music. They found that many different areas of the brain were active at once when processing the music. Music touches every part of the brain in some way. The auditory cortex is affected by the pitch and rhythm. The visual cortex deals with reading music as a musician or just watching someone perform. When you dance or tap your foot to music that is activating your motor cortex. Every time you hear music you have some type of emotional response and that is because of your cerebellum. The hippocampus helps you remember the songs and lyrics that you have heard before. As you can see, when you listen to music it is effecting both hemispheres of your brain and every part of each.
Music effects musicians more than people just listening to music. In addition to all the things stated above it helps with cognitive skills and decision making, sometimes it can even change brain structures.
The next time you put in a pair of headphones or turn on the radio, you will now know that there are hundreds of parts in your body that are being impacted by what you are listening. There is so much more happening in the body than scientists originally thought. Music impacts everything.
The World of Music 