Music for Cognitive Enhancement — Effective for Some People
What does music do to our brains? It enhances cognitive development.
Music significantly influences human behavior by affecting different sections of the brain. People listen to music for many reasons and depending on the type or genre of the sounds, it affects them differently. Individuals use music to alleviate the emotional and psychological effects of different responses or feelings within the body, and some studies such as (Miendlarzewska & Trost, 2014) and (Nicolich, 2008) have shown that such techniques tend to promote cognitive performance. The idea of music enhancing cognitive performance has had exclusive attention in the research and studies of many scientists such as Gupta, Bhushan, and Behera, who have been trying to link it to how different types of music influence performance.
However, as much as there exists documented evidence of research that demonstrates different effects of music on the cognitive performance of various individuals, there has also been research that contradicts these findings (Nicolich, 2008). These studies suggest that music doesn’t enhance performance but, instead, is found to be destructive to the participants’ cognitive performances.
