Story and Photos by Abigail Keller
What is it about music?
Why does it take you back to a moment from years past?
Why does a certain song cause your heart rate to drop while another makes it rise?
Why does it cause chills to run down your spine or a tear to fall down your cheek?
Cadences, dynamics and harmonies all play a part, but so does the brain.
“We are wired to be musical creatures,” Donald Hodges, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said. “Music is a form of human behavior, so it responds to all the laws of human behavior.”
For centuries, humans have used music to sing lullabies to the young, mark special occasions, communicate with others. It also has proven to have the capabilities to heal the body, mind and spirit, using methods such as music therapy.
Although definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world, every known culture partakes in it, and it is thus considered a cultural universal.
Some cultures use music to pass down stories from one generation to another, preserving their cultural heritage. Traditional music, from African drumming to Celtic folk music, educates younger generations and keeps traditions alive.
An approach to the definition of music is to focus not on the construction but the experience of it. The boundary between music and noise changes over time as musical interpretation evolves within a culture, and it varies from person to person according to their experiences.
Unlike other art forms, several different areas of the brain are affected when listening to music.
It all starts with sound waves entering the ear.
These sound waves strike the eardrum, causing vibrations that are converted into electric signals. After traveling to the brainstem — the brain’s message relay station for auditory information — they disperse throughout the brain.
We may not realize it when listening to our favorite tune, but music activates many sectors of the mind.
The temporal lobe helps process tone and pitch. The cerebellum helps process and regulate rhythm, timing and physical movement. The amygdala and hippocampus play a role in emotions and memories.
When exposed to slow beat music, the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated, decreasing the heart rate, and while listening to fast beat music the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated and increases the heart rate.
While your sympathetic nervous system carries signals that put your body’s systems on alert, your parasympathetic carries signals that relax those systems. The two systems work together to keep your body in balance.
Brain waves of music listeners can even synchronize when they attend a live concert, researchers report. When the performance is live and experienced as part of a group, people tend to enjoy the music more than if it were coming from the radio.
When people move and listen together, they feel a sense of community.
This happens because neurons in the brain fire with the beat of the music, which helps people feel connected to one another by synchronizing their brain waves when they listen to the same song.
“Sometimes there’s a moment during a concert where the instruments cut out and it’s just the audience using their voices to sing the music together,” Ryan Cooper, a student at UNC-Charlotte, said. “There are no words to describe that feeling.”
Within the brain, the auditory cortex is the most highly organized processing unit of sound. This cortex area is the neural crux of hearing, language and music.
“The auditory cortex is really robust,” Jorge Almodovar, an associate professor of general neurology and neuromuscular disorders at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine, said. “You shut your eyes, but you don’t shut your ears. While you’re sleeping, your ears are working. While you’re awake, your ears are working.”
Similar to listening, making music might be one of the most difficult things the brain can do.
Every time a musician practices, their brains rewire by strengthening synapses, building new neurons, and rebuilding the myelin sheath.
Musicians have been found to have a significantly larger corpus callosum than others without the same training. That means that the two halves of musicians’ brains can communicate with one another more quickly and along more diverse routes across their expanded corpus callosum.
“When I started playing in middle school, I fell in love with music,” said Kathy Mathis, a bassoonist who received her master’s degree in music therapy from East Carolina University. “Little did I know that it would be helping my brain out in such unexpected ways.”
The idea of music as a healing influence has been around for a long time, but the field of music therapy wasn’t created until just under 80 years ago.
Music therapists are degreed professionals with training in neuroscience, music and the therapeutic process.
The profession formally began after World War I and World War II when community musicians of all types, both amateur and professional, went to veterans’ hospitals around the country to play for the thousands of veterans suffering both physical and emotional trauma from the wars.
Patients’ notable physical and emotional responses to music, such as reduced anxiety and stabilized blood pressure, led the doctors and nurses to request the hiring of musicians by the hospitals.
Soon it became evident that the hospital musicians needed some prior training before entering the facility and so the demand grew for a college curriculum.
Michigan State University established the first academic program in music therapy in 1944 and other universities followed suit.
The Music Therapy Association of North Carolina had its first organizational meeting on July 15, 1978, at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. On Oct. 10, 1978, MTANC was incorporated as a North Carolina non-profit organization.
Today, there are about 10,000 providers in the United States who have become board-certified in music therapy.
“It’s important to use music to get together,” Alie Chandler, owner or Ossia Music Therapy in Chapel Hill, said. “There’s nothing that can really bond you with others like music.”
Music therapy treatment sessions are designed based on a person’s particular needs. Treatment options can include creating, singing, moving to and listening to music.
Treatment may help those with mental health needs, developmental and learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, brain injuries and more.
For example, listening to music may reduce agitation and improve behavioral issues that are common in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Even in the late stages, a person may be able to tap a beat or sing lyrics to a song from childhood.
Since music therapy can be highly personalized, it’s very versatile and offers benefits for people with a variety of musical experience levels and with different mental or physical health challenges. The interactivity of music combined with the intimacy of therapy leads to a unique way to heal.
For people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures, music means something. It’s the common thread that ties humanity together.
Because, as Hans Christian Andersen said, where words fail, music speaks.
