Music and the Brain

Published in

Blank 101

5 min readJul 13, 2021

Written by Aviral Gupta

Mama, oooh, Didn’t mean to make you cry, If I’m not back again this time tomorrow, Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters, “Wait, what was I doing? Yeah shit, I had to study, gotta finish the whole course this night or Imma fail the end sems again.” *cries in pain*

Have you ever found yourself jamming to your favorite music while you walk towards the class and see the world around you fade away? Even to the point of ignoring your friend? Yeah, me too! Some of us might jam to Tunak Tunak or sing Baby in our bathrooms (for real though, stop this at least), but one thing is constant: we, the beings of planet Earth, love music. Often we feel that listening to music might have alleviated our sadness, or was it just an illusion conjured up by our brain to trick us into thinking that we are not inside the matrix, not the matrix’s emotion manipulation system.

Have you ever just put on your playlist on Spotify and just shut your eyes for five minutes? Well, we all know that those five minutes never are five minutes.

Is Time Travel Possible? No, it’s not, but music messing with your perception of time surely is. Music is a potent stimulus that can dramatically affect our relationship with time. In layman’s terms, time flies when listening to pleasant music. Therefore, music is used in waiting rooms to reduce the duration of time spent waiting(figuratively) and in supermarkets to keep you in for an extended period of time, so you buy more stuff.

Well, who knows, maybe the time taken by the guy in Interstellar to get back might have been less if he were listening to some sick beats.

The Tempo of the music is also a key factor. For example, most of the time in bars, the barkeepers play slow-tempo music, creating an environment where patrons want to linger around and order another round.

Music can do a lot more, though. It can tap into one of the most integral parts of our heritage that ensured human beings’ survival as a species, the primal fear or the urge to survive. One of the prime (see what I did there?) examples of this phenomenon can be witnessed in horror movies where filmmakers and composers use music to heighten our suspense and terror. The harsh, discordant, and unexpected sounds combined with jump scares can even leave an adult man wishing he wore a diaper.

This effect even has had real-world repercussions. In 2004, The Royal Automobile Club deemed Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie the most dangerous music to listen to while driving. This music’s frenzied tempo challenges drivers’ usual sense of speed and causes them to speed up. Is this why in Snyder Cut, whenever Wonder Woman even breathes, they play ‘the theme.’ (Raises eyebrows)

(Listen from 1:17 it was everywhere in the snyder cut)

Everyone likes a good scare once in a while, but what if I said music could make you brighter and happier. Listening to music essentially changes how you feel and how you feel directly affects your cognitive ability. Hence by listening to the right music, you can effectively improve or boost your power for a short duration. So maybe you should head back to the playlists on YouTube promising to increase your intelligence by over 9000!

What about playing music, you might ask? It is equivalent to a gym workout for your brain. Playing music gives the brain a multisensory “workout” that can strengthen memory, help you pay attention, and perhaps even improve your reading ability.

What may be music to one’s ears can be noise to others, but one thing which can’t be disputed is that music is an integral part of our life. This is precisely why it has found its way even into medicinal uses. Usually, in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, the patients are unresponsive. Still, if you put on headphones with their favorite music, their eyes light up, and sometimes they even start singing along.

Such is the power of music. If you are stressed, pop in your earphones and start listening to your favorite songs. “Music has charms to soothe even a savage beast,” so it should work for you. Well, it certainly did help when my roommate ate the last piece of pizza.

“Music is life itself”-Louis Armstrong.

Music is a way some of us express ourselves and for some more than that. We all are musicians, in a way. The rhythmic sound of our footsteps or the melody created on the tabletop with a pencil are all masterpieces in their own right. So just appreciate the daily melodies be it the chirping of the bird or the annoying guy playing guitar at the Student Plaza.

Sources:

Music and the Brain

Written by Blank 101