by Daniel LaPonsie at Psychology Punk (psychologypunk.com)

Music assists with our emotional and behavioral health. While most of us know this intuitively, it’s nice to know that psychological science backs this up.

music lights up your brain, whether you’re listening to Beatles or Vivaldi or Rancid

Dr. Vinoo Alluri and her colleagues had been interested in the way our brains react to music for almost several years now. She and her colleagues are particularly interested in using brain imaging techniques, which find that auditory, motor and limbic regions all become active while we are listening to music.

This brought about a question. Does music preference play a role, or is there something else at play in activating these regions of our brains?

A 2013 paper was published that detailed her research into that question. It seems that whether people are listening to Beatles or Vivaldi, roughly the same areas of the brain become active. She didn’t use Rancid in her study, but I’d guess the results would likely be similar.

Motor areas process the rhythm, the auditory areas process the sound, and the limbic regions are associated with the emotions. Therefore personal preference might play a slight role, good music will still hit the rhythm and sound buttons in your head.

Alluri et al. (2013). From Vivaldi to Beatles and back: Predicting lateralized brain responses to music. NeuroImage DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.06.064

a single song can take you back in time

Carol Lynne Krumhansl and Justin Adam Zupnick did research into the way that we attach personal memories to music. Previous research has suggested that the songs we encounter during late adolescence and early adulthood carries the most significance to us throughout our lives.

However, Krumhansl and Zupnick’s work found that songs listened to throughout our childhood can also have a lasting impact, and that “participants’ personal memories associated with songs increased steadily as they got older, from birth until the present day.”

Krumhansl & Zupnick (2013). Cascading Reminiscence Bumps in Popular Music. Psychological Science DOI:10.1177/0956797613486486

songs can help alleviate memory problems

Similar to the way in which a song can bring back a fond memory, by triggering a moment of reminiscing, music has been found to be useful in treating people with memory problems due to traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).

A 2013 paper details work done by Amee Baird and Séverine Samson with participants who had suffered severe TBIs. Participants listened to number-one songs from their lifetimes to see what memories were evoked.

Baird and Samson found that this “was more efficient at evoking autobiographical memories than verbal prompts of the Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI) across each life period, with a higher percentage of ‘music-evoked autobiographical memories’ (MEAMs) for each life period compared with AMI scores.”

Baird & Sampson (2013). Music evoked autobiographical memory after severe acquired brain injury: Preliminary findings from a case series. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation: An International Journal DOI: 10.1080/09602011.2013.858642

Images:
“Rancid, Sala Razzmatazz,” by Altera2. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
“Me And My Emily,” by Lisa Roe. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
“Explaining to Betty How the Harp Works,” by Ann. CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
“Radiohead live in Taipei, Taiwan,” by kudumomo. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.