It doesn't surprise me about music enhancing our health, and though I haven't heard the connection between music and the heart before, I've been fascinated with stories of how music carves its own neuro-pathways through the brain, and how the entire body responds.
Researchers can actually "see" music as it finds its way across the cortex of the human brain. A 2002 study at Dartmouth published in the journal Science showed how we respond to melody and harmony, and how a pattern in music actually becomes a pattern in the brain. (It's also partially why, when you say "I have a song stuck in my head and I can't get it out," that you're telling the truth!) And the part of the brain that experiences music is also the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory. In short, if you hear a great song at a happy moment in your life, the two events are linked in your brain. It stands to reason that hearing that song later in life will bring back a feeling of good will -- maybe even a toe-tapping response!
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It doesn't surprise me about music enhancing our health, and though I haven't heard the connection between music and the heart before, I've been fascinated with stories of how music carves its own neuro-pathways through the brain, and how the entire body responds.
Researchers can actually "see" music as it finds its way across the cortex of the human brain. A 2002 study at Dartmouth published in the journal Science showed how we respond to melody and harmony, and how a pattern in music actually becomes a pattern in the brain. (It's also partially why, when you say "I have a song stuck in my head and I can't get it out," that you're telling the truth!) And the part of the brain that experiences music is also the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory. In short, if you hear a great song at a happy moment in your life, the two events are linked in your brain. It stands to reason that hearing that song later in life will bring back a feeling of good will -- maybe even a toe-tapping response!
Here's an article on the Science journal report:
http://www.eupsychia.com/perspectives/articles/musicbrain.html
December 1, 2008 - 10:37amThis Comment
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