How does music affects the brain ?

Manuel Ponce Casas

Human beings coexista watt music at all times. This type art tan makes us enjoy pleasant
times, it encourages us to remember facts from the past, it makes us share emotions in
group songs, concerts or sports stands. But that which is quite natural, occurs through
complex and surprising neuronal mechanisms. That is why from the neurosciences we often
ask ourselves this question: what does music do to our brain?
Music seems to have a long past, as much or more than verbal language. Proof of this are
the archaeological findings of flutes built with bird bones, whose antiquity is estimated at
6,000 to 8,000 years, or even more so than other instruments that could precede homo
sapiens. There are several theories about this intimate coexistence with music in evolution.
Some of these occurred because when studying the response of the brain to music, the key
areas that are involved are the control and execution of movements. One hypothesis
postulates that this is the reason why music developed: to help all of us move together. And
the reason why this would have an evolutionary benefit is that when people move in unison
they tend to act more altruistically and be more united. Some scientists, in turn, suggest that
the influence of music on us may have arisen from a fortuitous event, due to its ability to
hijack brain systems constructed for other purposes, such as language, emotion and
movement.
We listen to music from the cradle or, even, in the gestation period. Babies, in the first
months of life, have the ability to respond to melodies rather than verbal communication
from their parents. Soft musical sounds relax them. It is known, for example, that premature
children who can not sleep are benefited by the mother's beats or sounds that imitate them.

Music is considered among the elements that cause most pleasure in life. It releases
dopamine in the brain as do food, sex and drugs. All of them are stimuli that depend on a
subcortical brain circuit in the limbic system, that is, that system formed by brain structures
that manage physiological responses to emotional stimuli; particularly, the caudate nucleus
and the nucleus accumbens and their connections with the pre-frontal area. The studies that
show activation before the aforementioned stimuli reveal an important overlap between the
areas, which suggests that everyone activates a common system.
These memories were the basis for an original investigation, led by Agustín Ibáñez and
Lucía Amoruso, which was carried out by the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences
(INECO) on brain mechanisms that allow anticipating actions. Our brain constantly tries to
anticipate what is going to happen. To analyze this, they showed expert tango dancers
videos in which, according to the level of experience, they could foresee (or not) when
other dancers would make an error. While they watched, the activation of certain regions of
the brain with high density electroencephalogram was recorded. This investigation revealed
that only in the experts, 400 milliseconds before the sequence was initiated, brain activity
anticipated that an error would occur. There are circuits in the cerebral cortex involved in
the perception, coding, storage and in the construction of the abstract schemes that
represent the regularities extracted from our previous musical experiences. The
construction of expectations and their possible violation is key to an emotional response.
The relationship of music with language is also an object of study. Language processing is
a function more linked to the left side of the brain than to the right side in right-handed
people, although the functions performed by both sides of the brain in the processing of
different aspects of language are not yet clear. The music is also processed by the right and
left hemispheres. Recent evidence suggests a shared processing between language and
music at the conceptual level. But music seems to offer a new method of communication
rooted in emotions instead of meaning as understood by the linguistic sign. Research shows
that what we feel when we listen to a piece of music is very similar to what the rest of the
people in the same place are experiencing. That's why melodies, in many cases, can work to
our benefit at the individual level, by modulating mood and even human physiology, more
effectively than words. The simultaneous activation of various brain circuits produced by
music seems to generate some remarkable effects: instead of facilitating a largely semantic
dialogue, as the language does, the melody seems to mediate a more emotional dialogue.
The health area uses music in order to improve, maintain or try to recover cognitive,
physical, emotional and social functioning, and help slow down the progress of different
medical conditions. Music therapy, through the clinical use of music, seeks to activate
physiological and emotional processes that can stimulate diminished or deteriorated
functions and enhance conventional treatments. Important results have been observed in
patients with movement disorders, difficulty in speaking due to stroke, dementia,
neurological disorders and in children with special abilities, among others.

Babies, in the first months of life, have the ability to respond to melodies rather than verbal
communication from their parents "

Music can be a powerful tool in the treatment of brain disorders and acquired injuries
helping patients to recover language and motor skills, since it activates almost all regions of
the brain. Neuroimaging studies show that both listening and making music stimulate
connections in a wide swath of brain regions normally involved in emotion, reward,
cognition, sensation and movement. New music-based therapies may favor neuroplasticity -
new connections and circuits - that partly compensate for the deficiencies in the damaged
regions of the brain. Music is physical and encourages people to move with rhythm. The
more prominent the rhythm, the more radical and forceful the movement of the body.
Physical exercise can help improve circulation, protect the brain and facilitate motor
function. Music induces emotional states by facilitating changes in the distribution of
chemical substances that can induce positive moods and increased arousal, which in turn
can help rehabilitation.
Emotion, expression, social skills, theory of mind, linguistic and mathematical skills,
visuospatial and motor skills, attention, memory, executive functions, decision making,
autonomy, creativity, emotional and cognitive flexibility, all come together in the
experience shared musical People sing and dance together in all cultures. We know that we
do it today and we will continue doing it in the future. We can imagine that our ancestors
did it, around the fire, thousands of years ago. We are what we are with music and music,
neither more nor less.

Https://elpais.com/elpais/2015/08/31/ciencia/1441020979_017115.html
https://bebrainfit.com/music-brain/
https://www.ashford.edu/online-degrees/student-lifestyle/how-does-music-affect-your-brain