INTRODUCTION

Background

This report examines the use of music in different field by affecting the brain system.
Music has always been the greatest invention of humankind. It shows the culture, the
emotions, and even later it shows the revolt of people. A fine art or a brilliant invention,
if you asked, it is somewhere between science and art. The special connection between
music and mathematics is the reason. Some people said it is a sound, some said it is a
vibration; no one considers it as a noise or collision. You love music. We love music.
Everyone does. It acts as a medium to not only listen to our deepest heart but takes your
soul to another dimension, a journey of thought to enlighten you with a whole new
experience or answer. A simple combination of pitch and rhythm but holds the power to
change ones life and mind. Once again, this is not magic but music.

Purpose

By holding such power, various scientists have discovered the enhancement that could be
brought by music to help people in different field. No matter what field it is to help,
music affect human by affecting their brain. To understand how it affects the brain and
how we could enhance the result with the theory is this research papers main purpose.

Methodology

Music is such a big part of our life. It not only has the benefits of self-enjoyment but also
improve brain function by stimulating the brain through diverse neural circuitry.
Importantly, the behavioral advantages conferred by musical experience extend beyond
simple enhancements to perceptual abilities and even impact non-auditory functions
necessary for higher-order aspects of cognition (e.g., working memory,
intelligence)(Moreno). With this process, it is not only enhancing learning, also
improves memory and attention. Our brain is divided into two parts called the right and
left hemispheres. Each part has different jobs and function to control different process.
Music helps to connect these two parts of brain together by activating the neurons across
the corpus callosum. By knowing this theory, many researches have been made to prove
that music does not only helps for relaxing or enjoyment, for example: improving
creativity, language, arts, and even therapy.


DISCUSSION

Theoretical effect by Music

Before we discuss how music improve our efficient of studies or work, let us
understand how do our brains receive music and react. When the music starts playing, it
means the music source is vibrating the atmosphere and moves the particles. The air
particles then move the other particles around it, sending a pulse of the vibration through
the atmosphere. The outer layer of our ear called Pinna collects the sound waves cause
by the vibration in the air. The sound waves then go into the middle part called the Ear
Canal and hit the Ear Drum, which is a thin piece of membrane. The sensitive Ear Drum
starts to vibrate and also vibrate the next section, which is the Ossicles. It is made up by
three pieces of soft bone, the Hammer, Anvil and Stirrup. These three sections pass the
vibrations along the Cochlea in the inner ear to thousands of hair-like nerves, the Cilia.
When it vibrates, it sends the signal to the brain through the Auditory Nerve. Then from
here on, it is the brains job to continue the process, ears jobs done.

So what happened to the brain while the sound gets in there? As we all know, our
brain is so complicated that it makes us the smartest being on planet Earth. The sound
affect brain in different areas depends on what kind of sound it is. In this discussion, let
us assume that the sound is Music. Music affects different areas of brain at the same time.
The major parts are the Corpus Callosum, Motor Cortex. Prefrontal Cortex Nucleus
Accumbens, Amygdala, Sensory Cortex, Auditory Cortex, Hippocampus, Visual Cortex,
and Cerebellum. The functions of each part when it receives music are as follows:

Corpus Callosum: connects left and right hemispheres
Motor Cortex: Movement of dancing or playing an instrument
Frontal Cortex: Creation of expectations, violations and satisfaction of
expectations.
Nucleus Accumbens: Emotional Reactions to music
Amygdala: Emotional Reactions to music
Sensory Cortex: Tactile feedback from playing an instrument or dancing
Auditory Cortex: The first stages of listening to sounds. The perception and
analysis of tones.
Hippocampus: Memory for music, musical experiences and contexts.
Visual Cortex: Reading music, looking at a performers or ones own movements.
Cerebellum: Movement such as foot tapping, dancing, and playing instrument.
Also involved in emotional reactions to music.

So how does these have to do with working on homework? Our brain has two major
hemispheres, which is easily called the right and left hemispheres. The right hemisphere
is responsible to process information, creative imagination, and so on, basically working
on the artistic works. While the left side is the scientific part which controls mathematical
work, logic, and etc. And there is one more thing between these two, called the corpus
callosum. It connects both side of the hemispheres and controls the communication of
them. From here, we understand that how much work we could have done by using just
one side of our hemisphere. Imagine how much work we could do by using both at the
same time. It is easier to talk than doing. It is impossible to use both hemisphere at the
same time by functioning them hundred percent. No one could possibly do that without
specific training. So what we could do is try to connect them closer, closer I mean
mentally instead of positional, to each other. So the secret lies in the middle part, the
corpus callosum, to strengthen the hemispheres connection. We always say that Music is
magical. Yes it is. It is so special and unique that it can stimulate a bunch of neurons
across the corpus callosum. While the neurons are activated, two hemispheres occur a
resonance to each other and create a state of harmony between them. At this moment,
your brain become one and stronger as we usually say, United we stand.

Also, music increases learning energies through neural oscillations, which we
called the brain waves. The major waves that include in this process are the alpha and
theta waves. Alpha waves improve our creativity while the theta waves are related to
dreaming, learning and relaxing. As we all know, different work has to be done by
different part of brain. Similarly, to boost the energy in learning certain field depends on
the type of music we listen to. For example: if we want inspirations in language, it would
make sense if we listen to singing type of music. This is because it stimulates the artistic
sense. On the other hand, if we want to learn mathematics, music without words might be
the choice because it stimulates the visual sense. Music also has a unique function that it
helps to balance the hemispheres stress. For example: an accountant who focused on his
or her job with left hemisphere for a whole day may experienced an unbelievable level of
peace and calm while they are listening to classical music or other genres that would
enhance the contrary side of the brain, which is the right hemisphere. An artist who
depends on their right hemisphere may depend on lyric-styled music to help for their
inspiration and relaxation on their left hemisphere. These comparisons show the effective
result by listening to music.


Evidence for this research can be proved by one of the most famous composer of
all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose childhood are being read like legends. At an
extremely young age, he could tune the violin perfectly, sight read a music while people
practice for hours, memorize a piece of sonata by listening just once. These are all
basically from the right hemisphere. But, as a German, his fluency in French, Italian, and
English is the proof that his left hemisphere has developed so well as his right
hemisphere. This indicates that music is a big part of enhancing human potential by
connecting the two hemispheres and balancing it. Of course, more researches are being
done with the usage of music to balance the hemispheres.

Improvement by music

Have you ever hummed a melody when you feel happy to get a good grade? Have
you ever feel like singing out loud to get rid of stress? All these actions show that music
can help us to control our emotional part of ourselves, and we knew that as our instinct.
Anxiety, fatigue, and even boredom can be released by music. Our brain can also respond
differently to happy and sad music. But this is not because the tune is happy or sad. It is
how we interpret our expression as happy or sad to match the music we heard.
Sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling
them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than
depressing (Cooper). That is why different people have their individual expression on
one same tune of music. And, when we listen to the music that matches our feelings, we
shared it out. This process, I believe, many people have experienced it. We find a song
that matches our feelings at that certain time, play it, and sing it together. The way we
react to music with our expression keeps us in control in a stable emotion rather than
stressing out from a job or feeling depress by a bad grade. Another example is that,
although it is a bad thing to do, we sometimes walk on the street with our earphones plug
into our ears. The state where we entered the music with our mind isolated us from the
real life awareness. In other words, when we listen to music walking on the street, we feel
safe and do not feel danger. This is actually very dangerous and is the reason why
pedestrians with earphones plug into their ears are always target of snatch thieves.

Earlier we mentioned about the genius Mozart unintentionally developed his
balance of left and right hemisphere. And the way he learned so many languages so fast
at a young age and also used them in several operas. Not only him, music is also one of
the most common used method to learn a language now a days. This is related to the
strong connection between two hemispheres, which is needed for optimal function of
both languages, and music. Right hemisphere is responsible for understanding
complicated level of languages such as stories and metaphors. When we are young, we
learn to read and write in elementary school. These training induce functional changes in
relevant connections, and modify our brain for specific function that we needed at certain
circumstances. The brain transfers acoustic stimuli into the unique human abilities for
language and music, and may help bridge the divide between the sciences and the
humanities(Language And Music).

The Stanford researchers Tallal and Gabrieli have gone through a research and
found that people who have learned music are better in controlling their changes in tone
sound by processing in split-second. They compared the result to non-musical learner,
and the result is surprising. Musical training appears to alter the ability of the brains
language areas to process pitch and timing changes that are common to perceiving both
words and music(Trei). The research continues, as they want to understand more about
the way to practice this way of learning languages development. If this research can be
success, this will change how the world teaches languages entirely in all languages.
Children will learn faster, world will communicate better. This is also a dream that music
could possibly bring everyone together.

Although the well-known Mozart Effect has proved to be only maintaining
increased level of intelligent in approximately fifteen minutes, music has proved to help
us in exercising with a few researches. Music should increase the duration during
which participants can tolerate stressful conditions while evaluating test
choices(Perlovsky). We can see people jogging with their earphone in our daily life.
They are listening to music just because they are bored of jogging or are they just feeling
lazy to talk to people? Maybe they did not think much about it but just feel like it to do it
while exercising. When we listen to music, the sound waves draw out our brains fatigue.
When we are tired of working out, our brain sends signals to stop for a break. On the
contrary, when we listen to music, it helps us to override those signals. Some researches
have shown that different genres of music can help us in different level of exercises too.
Different genres of music means different tempo in the music. The graphic below from
www.lifehacker.com, the article How Music Affects and Benefits Your Brain by Belle
Beth Cooper, shows the best tempo we could use to sync our exercise rate:
Graphic #1


From this we can see how tempo affect our brain and help us in exercising by increasing
our motivation. But anything higher than 145 bpm does not have much motivation for us.

Development in Music Therapy

Music has not only help in learning, working, and relaxing. As it has strong
relation with our neural system, it can be cure to some neural related disease too. Music
therapy has being widely used in this generation. Music therapy is usually being used to
help patients with neurological conditions by stimulating certain regions of their body
and enhance blood flow, metabolism, or connections of hemisphere. This kind of therapy
is credited to Dr. Oliver Sacks who was featured in the movie Awakenings. Again,
different genres have different usage in therapy. For example: Classical music helps to
lower blood pressure. Researchers have shown that listening to calming music for period
of time everyday is extremely effective for stabilizing blood pressure levels(Jockers).
Also, founder of Eleven-eleven Wellness Center in New York, Dr. Frank Lipman have
research in similar topic. Recommends musical time-outs as a way to calm your body
and brain with soothing rhythms and to slow down your heart rate and help you breathe
easier(Bootheby).

Music therapy is used on two majors disease: Alzheimers disease and
Parkinsons disease. In Alzheimers disease, which is related to the damage of temporal
lobe that is functioning memories, music stimulates directly at the memories.
Researchers have found that listening to music can indirectly stimulate memory
fragments that would not otherwise be retrieved(Jockers). This process helps the patient
to approach to emotional comfort and brain function improvement effectively. As for
Parkinsons disease, which is a disorder of the brain that leads to shaking and difficulty
with walking, movement, and coordination (www.wikipedia.com). The Basal Ganglia,
where our brain organizes our thoughts and movements, can receive musical beats and
stimulate motor control in our brain in addition to approach better control of movement
and coordination. Combining this music with dance steps and other movements has been
shown to improve walking speed and coordination for individuals with
Parkinson's(Jockers).

In future, music can also be use in psychological disease suffering depression or
anger. Reason is that music can affect ones emotion or stimulate ones mind. Those who
dare not face death may be able to face it; those who are never happy could be happy. In
fact, the use of sound planning means placed with a view to the point where interactive
dialectic founding of the report is not sound in its artistic significance, but the patient in
his expressive.(Corona). Music does not only changes the patients physically in body
disease but also mentally because of its expression. What make us human is because we
have emotion. That is our soul. If our soul is corrupted, music is the best cure.

CONCLUSION

Findings

This report has shown that most of the astonishing results from experiments are from
musical experience and training. When we listen to music, we think; that is how music
related to brain. If we just keep it in the background, it will never help. Which means,
even though it helps in memorization or creative imagination, simply turning on the
music does not help unless we understand the music. And most research experiments are
tested out successfully with one genre of music, the classical music. But if we have not
learned it before, the therapy or enhancement could be a failure.

Recommendation

Early musical training at young age is strongly recommended in order to access the
musical power in education or therapy. Musical training benefits so much more than
language and creativity. But only effective if training was accepted at early age. Also,
from this report we see the importance of the role of Corpus Cullum that connects the two
hemispheres. To enhance this idea, learning the piano as an instrument is recommended
as pianist learned to coordinate both hands at the same time, means more training of
connecting both hemispheres are happening during the practice.






Work Cited

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Cooper, Belle Beth. Common Work Out Tempos. Digital image. Lifehacker. Buffer, n.d.
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FhDWB864--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/19751l4x9ejwepng.png>.

Cooper, Belle Beth. "How Music Affects and Benefits Your Brain."Lifehacker. Buffer,
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how-it-benefits-you-1469597259>.

Corona, Felice, et al. "MUSIC THERAPY A SPECIAL MEDIATOR FOR THE
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Jockers, David. "Improve Your Brain with Music." NaturalNews. Natural News, n.d.
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Language And Music: What Do They Have In Common And How Do They Differ? A
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Moreno, Sylvain, and Gavin M. Bidelman. "Examining Neural Plasticity And Cognitive
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Perlovsky, Leonid, et al. "Mozart Effect, Cognitive Dissonance, And The Pleasure Of
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Trei, Lisa. "News." Musical Training Helps Language Processing, Studies Show.
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