Music and Mental Health
We all enjoy music. We have our own favourite form of music. Some may like rock, some classical, while some may like light music, vocal or instrumental. There could be various reasons as to why you like music. The good news is, music may help you alleviate from a stressful situation and also improve your mood, memory, anxiety related issues and as a result of all this — believe it or not — it has an ability to even reduce physical pain!!
Music and effects on Stress and Anxiety:-
Listening to music was found to be more effective than medications in reducing anxiety before surgery. Studies have shown that music soothes the patients in pediatric care department, and also, patients in palliative care departments of hospital. As a result of which, there was less problem to insert intravenous line to children who were exposed to music than the ones without music. While there was less pain and stress seen in palliative patients who were listening to music than the ones who were not listening to the same.
Some spine surgery patients also noticed lesser pain post surgery — who were made to listen to music of their own choice since the evening till the next day, till completion of their surgery — as compared to the patients who didn’t listen to any music.
Similar was the case with the patients of fibromyalgia, a condition where there is musculoskeletal pain. Patients who listened to music once a day for four weeks experienced noteworthy reduction in pain and less depressive symptoms than the patients who listened to no music.
As pain causes stress it may be used as one of the markers of decrease in stress level.
A study carried out in a neonatal ICU unit, revealed that the premature babies who were exposed to music and womb mimicking sounds recovered faster and well in comparison with those who didn’t listen to any music. Especially those who listened to the lullabies sung by their own parents recovered the best. Thus, emphasizing on the point that this recovery may be linked to decrease in stress levels.
Anxiety-induced growths in heart rate and systolic blood pressure, and reduction in cortisol hormone levels — all being biological indicators of stress — can be prevented with music. Hence listening to music is linked to relaxation.
Hence music is a good way of stress and pain management.
Music and Mood
As per neuroscientists, music has the power to enhance optimistic feeling through the reward centers of our brain. Music stimulates release of feel good hormone, dopamine that causes make us feel enjoyable or ecstatic. Thus music may improve your mood and make you joyful and positive.
According to a study, music has an ability to console the saddened or depressed individuals. The participants responded saying the lyrics as well the music itself proved most powerful to produce consolation. Thus it helps avoid sadness and uplifts mood. In this study, it was noted that pop and rock were the forms of music associated with consolation.
There is some evidence that listening to positive music, gives hope after failure.
Music and Cognitive Development: -
1. Learning to play an instrument has great effects on academic performance of children. It not only it improves their performance but also improves all indexes of the IQ including verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, and avoidance of distractibility, and processing speed. This influence appears to be strongest when musical training takes place during sensitive periods, i.e. before the age of 7.
2. In a study, an IQ test was performed for college going students, they were divided into three groups: One was the group who took the test after listening to 10 minutes of Mozart piano sonata (music). The other group listened to a relaxation tape for 10 minutes while the third one was in silent environment. It was noted that the group of student who Mozart piano, performed better on the IQ test with an average on 8–9 on 10 than the rest of the two groups.
3. Music is also associated with learning ability and improving memory. A study with adult students showed that those who sung the foreign language phrases fared much better in a recall test afterwards, than the other two groups consisting of students who spoke the phrases in rhythmic manner and those who just spoke. This may again be linked to the dopamine release which has been tied to motivation related learning and memory.
4. A study on older adults also concluded that music improves episodic memory in them suggesting the idea that music is a good tool for memory rehabilitation. This background music here was a cheerful, audio jazz piece (“If you see my mother” by Sidney Bechet).
5. It has been noted that music helps the patients with dementia as well.
6. Listening to lively “beaty” music is also associated better productivity than slow, melodious music. However, there should be pauses among pieces of music to increase productivity, or else continuous music is similar to continuous noise and may affect output.
In spite of a booming evidence, many studies have shown that the effect on cognition is short term. Although listening to music may have little long-term effect, a couple of studies stated that learning to play an instrument may boost the brain’s capability to master jobs involving language skills, memory, attention and IQ in adults as well.
Nevertheless, neurologists and researchers recommend there should be more researches conducted to know the long term positive effects of music on the brain and mind.
References:-
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/music-and-health-rock-on_n_6573132.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734071/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/music-and-health
http://syncproject.co/blog/2016/8/23/music-offers-solace-in-sadness
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00301/full
http://reflectd.co/2014/06/17/the-psychology-of-music/
