Music and the brain
A lot of research has been done in the past years to see how music actually affects the brain: whether that be listening to, composing, creating, improvising, etc. What we’re starting to see is that music affects the brain holistically, incorporating more brain activity than almost any other activity! In fact, it’s documented that musicians have the largest corpus calossum than any other people … pianists having the second largest (as they need to coordinate both hands primarily) and drummers the largest (as it requires coordination of both hands and feet at the same time!)
Here’s a few links of interest:
Music Moves Brain to Pay Attention – From Science Daily
Daniel Levitan’s research on Music and f-MRI – As a note, Daniel Levitan is leading the study of learning how music affects brain activity at McGill: his book This Is Your Brain on Music is incredible!
Is the brain pre-wired for music? Click here to find out!
Tags: Brain Activity, effects, Music
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January 26, 2010 at 8:20 am
There is a belief by some that many children, have underdeveloped ear muscles so they are unable to control how well they can attend (listen) and/or tune out sounds. Therapeutic Listening trains the ear and tends to help children with behavioural problems including children with ADHD.Perhaps this can help explain the efficacy of music therapy?
Here’s a link to information about therapeutic listening
http://www.vitallinks.net/PDF/TL%20Background%20web%20std.pdf