Special Report: Music – from my heart to your brain
Image credit: Aiju Salminen
Music is everywhere in our society – but where and how is it in the brain? How can it change our style of learning and living – or can it?
Music is ubiquitous in our modern society. Earphones and mobile phones deliver music to everybody online, all the time. Actually, this is nothing new – music has always been present in all known cultures in one form or another. But thanks to advances in brain science and in music psychology, we are now in a better position to understand the secrets and possibilities of music in improving human life and culture.
Here, a lifespan framework will be used as the platform for illustrating the outcome of music and brain studies. To motivate this starting point, it was recently discovered that music learning starts before birth. Even at the foetal stage, the brain has an amazing ability to learn and memorise tunes. This was evidenced when mothers-to-be committed to listening to specific researcher-composed auditory material during their late pregnancy. After their babies were born, we compared their sound-related brain responses to those of the babies whose mothers did not listen to this material. Right after their birth and even at the age of four months, the brain responses of the babies reflected the existence or lack of music exposure.1
As all parents know, in babies, toddlers and school-aged children, music listening gives joyful moments and can help soothe and relax them as well. Learning to play an instrument or joining a choir gives a special possibility to share music moments and feelings of cohesion. We now have scientific evidence that the power of music can boost their neurocognitive development – attention, memory, and linguistic processes, at least up to some extent, and maybe even mathematical and social functions.
Even casual, family-oriented music activities taking place at home are highly beneficial for the child’s cognitive development. Voluntary and self-initiated dancing, singing and listening to music were linked to advanced attentional neural functions.2 While this original finding was obtained with toddlers with intact hearing abilities, these casual music activities were also highly beneficial in deaf-born children who learnt to hear after receiving a cochlear implant (an electric hearing aid).3 In them, the frequency of music activities was positively associated with improved linguistic skills.
In adults, in my view, the most important and broadest positive effects of music can be seen through mood regulation and stress management. We are the professionals of our own mental health when optimising our Spotify or Deezer to match our current needs for motivating us to do exercise, housework, or for creating just the right atmosphere for concentration and relaxation.
In musicians we see evidence of dozens of perceptual, cognitive and motor benefits of music expertise in the brain functions and structure when compared to peers who aren’t musically trained. But, frankly, this might be the research outcome with any high-level multitalented professionals with artistic, intellectual and motor training who were as thoroughly studied as musicians have been during the past 30 years.
In this context it is more interesting to note that not all musicians are the same. Instead, their training background is mirrored in their brain indices, e.g. with professional jazz musicians having enhanced neural encoding of several sound features while classical or rock musicians have more specific profiles.4,5
Last but not least, in the current lifespan framework for music benefits, we also welcome the senior citizen and the potentially positive impact music can have on them. Taking into account the relative increase of the number of elderly citizens at the European level, leading to higher needs of geriatric, psychiatric, and neurological healthcare, it is worthwhile to consider all possible easy-to-implement means to alleviate their physical and mental conditions and subsequent societal needs.
We already know that neuronal decline is slower in healthy individuals with prior music practice and hobbies.6 At the same time we know that – based on everyday evidence – there is no upper age limit for beginning musical learning, just the opposite: the elderly can learn (or re-learn) to play an instrument and to perform in public as a member of a band or to sing in a choir as well.
On the other hand, we also have evidence indicating that patients who have a diagnosed memory disorder (Alzheimer’s disease or similar) can be treated with music sessions based on singing and listening to familiar songs. After ten such group-based sessions with the care-givers, cognitive decline was reduced (importantly, this was irrespective of the musical background of the participants).7, 8 We also know that listening to their favorite music after a stroke can facilitate both cognitive and emotional recovery.9
All this said, music indeed makes a bridge from emotion to cognition within and between individuals – thus linking my heart with your brain. It connects cognition and emotion as well as enhances wellbeing and social cohesion across the whole lifespan. How much this knowledge (including the promises by novel digital music environments and applications) will be utilised in education and rehabilitation remains to be evidenced. All in all, these benefits will depend on the available funding in this interdisciplinary, multimethodological and intersectorial research effort.
1Partanen et al. (2013). Prenatal music exposure induces long-term neural effects. PLoS One: e78946
2Putkinen et al. (2013). Do informal musical activities shape auditory skill development in preschool-age children? Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 572.
3Torppa et al. (2014). Interplay between singing and cortical processing of music: A longitudinal study in children with cochlear implants. Frontiers in Psychology 5, 1389.
4Vuust et al. (2012). The sound of music: Differentiating musicians using a fast, musical multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm. Neuropsychologia, 50, 1432–
5Tervaniemi et al. (2016). Auditory profiles of classical, jazz, and rock musicians: Genre-specific sensitivity to musical sound features. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1900.
6Strait & Kraus (2014). Biological impact of auditory expertise across the life span: musicians as a model of auditory learning. Hearing Research, 308, 109-121.
7Särkämö et al. (2014). Musical activities enhance cognitive skills, mood, quality of life, and caregiver well-being in early dementia. The Gerontologist, 54, 634–
8Särkämö et al. (2015). Clinical and demographic factors associated with the cognitive and emotional efficacy of regular musical activities in dementia. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 49, 767-781.
9Särkämö T., Tervaniemi M., Laitinen S., Forsblom A., Soinila S., Mikkonen M., Autti T., Silvennoinen H.M., Erkkilä, J., Laine M., Peretz I., Hietanen M. (2008). Music listening enhances cognitive recovery and mood after middle cerebral artery stroke. Brain, 131, 866–876.
Mari Tervaniemi, PhD
Research Director
CICERO Learning Network
Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences
University of Helsinki
http://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/en/person/tervanie
