Music for the brain By Kerene Anglin The

Music for the brain By Kerene Anglin

The Brain • Has 4 lobes– Frontal lobes • Prefrontal Lobe (planning & thinking) – Temporal lobes (sound, music, object, face recognition) – Occipital lobes (visual processing) – Parietal lobes (spatial orientation, calculation)

The Brain Function Other areas of the brain that help in brain function • Between the Parietal lobes and Frontal lobes are 2 bands • Motor Cortex- controls body movement • Somatosensory- processes touch signals received from body parts

The Brain Inside

The Neuron Function Dendrites brings information to the cell body and axons take information away from the cell body. • Information from one neuron flows to another neuron across a synapse.

Neuron Function

How your brain listens • Noise sends vibrations, or sound waves, through the air. • The human eardrum is a stretched membrane, like the skin of a drum. When the sound waves hit your eardrum, it vibrates and the brain interprets these vibrations as sound. • Music is sounds that are carried to the ear by changes in air pressure. • Different cells in the cochlea respond to pitch, melody, , timbre, harmony.

How your brain listens • When you hear a piece of music, the ear converts the sound waves into vibrations in specific parts of the inner and middle ear. • These vibrations are then translated into action potentials that travel through the eighth cranial nerve to the brain stem, the thalamus, and the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe • Information from the auditory cortex is transmitted to the frontal lobe which associates the sound of music with these varying patterns of impulses that generate thoughts, feelings, and stimulates emotions and past experiences.

How your brain listens • The inner ear contains a spiral sheet that pluck like a guitar string at the sound of music • The plucking triggers the brain cells that includes the hearing parts of your brain regions (auditory systems: cochlea) • The Brain decode the pattern in sounds before it decide what the sound is.

How your brain listens • It seems that the brain takes a song and translates it into it's own neurosymphonysending electrical impulses to various parts of your brain. It sounds almost as though we store various different patterns of these impulses in our brains and when the same pattern of sounds matches a pattern of impulses, it triggers a set of images.

Music • Music – stimulates and utilizes most parts of the brain – Music and art involves both right and left hemispheres of the brain because while one codifies lyrics the other tackles melody. – Thus, the human brain shows specialization and large scale involvement in music

Music Influence • • • Alter heart rate Breathing Blood pressure Pain threshold Muscle movements

The Biology of Music • Different Networks of neurons are activated depending on whether a person is listening or performing music. • Music stimulates specific regions of the brain responsible for memory, motor control, timing and language.

Music & The Brain • It makes sense then that music has the ability to generate emotions and memories, it actually stirs these sections of the brain. • Music stimulates and exercises the entire brain • Arts & Music enhances cognitive growth, human development, emotional and psychomotor pathways. • The effects of experience on the brain are of equal importance for understanding the important role of music in behavior and cognitive processes

Music & The Brain • Research has shown that brain synapses grow stronger through use and are weakened through disuse. • Learning music – Exercise the brain by strengthening the synapses between brain cells. – Activates the entire cerebral cortex while musicians are playing – Improves cognitive domains such as mathematics & reading

Music & The Brain • There is indication that music affects levels of various hormones, , such as: • cortisol (arousal & stress), • testosterone (arousal &aggression), • oxytocin (nurturing behavior) & • triggering endorphins

Music & Art • Extensive study has shown that both in the developing brain and adult brain, experience alters brain function • The connections between brain cells and the very operation of brain cells themselves is altered by what we sense, think and do. • Brains are shaped by experiences in a physical manner, with resultant changes in brain function.

Music facilitates learning • musical responses are widely distributed throughout the brain • Research shows that the structure of music and people's use of it are similar in key respects to language structure and use

Music & arts uses:

Music & arts uses: Left Hemisphere • left-brain region for letters and words • highly verbal • primarily a sequential learner • time conscious, • all-or-none (outcome) oriented, • prefers logical and analytical thinking, • Rational language, mathematics, abstraction and reasoning Memory stored in a language format

Music & arts uses: • Right Hemisphere – right-brain region for notes and musical scores & passages – Not easily able to express experiences in verbal form – Excellent spatial memory & highly developed sensory (spatial) recall. – adapt to synthesis and intuitive processing • Holistic Functioning: processing multi-sensory input simultaneously to provide "holistic" picture of one's environment. • Visual spatial skills. Holistic functions (dancing and gymnastics are coordinated by the right hemisphere) Memory is stored in auditory, visual and spatial modalities.

Music & art • The strength of connections between brain cells (called "synapses") is altered • Activity in synapses can strengthen them • lack of activity can weaken them • brain activity can produce new synapses

Major components of the human brain/mind: – Sensory and Perceptual (e. g. , auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic) – Cognitive: (e. g. , symbolic, linguistic, reading) – Planning Movements (e. g. , organizing a sequence of muscle actions) – Motor: (e. g. , fine muscle and gross muscle coordination) – Feedback/Evaluation (e. g. , hearing if one played the correct notes) – Motivational (e. g. , determination to study hard) – Learning (e. g. , acquiring new information or a motor skill) – Memory (e. g. , long term storage and use of new information and skills)

Music & arts: • Which of these brain systems and processes are heavily used in music, whether in singing, drawing or in playing a musical instrument? • music arts engages all of these components. • music performance provides a complete mind/brain "workout" • This workout should facilitate intercommunications between cells by strengthening synapses, thus improving brain function • Include-Transfer effects from music to other academic subjects

Transfer effects • Example - Music facilitates learning to read – Result from listening for changes in pitch in music – Promotes • the ability to sound out new words • Speech sounds • Art facilitates learning to create 3 -D drawings – Promotes the ability to use spatial and visual modalities

Triune brain theory • suggests that the human brain is really three brains in one • The smallest part – 5% of the brain, – the reticular formation • the gateway for most sensory input and is devoted to maintaining the operation of automatic body process, such as respiration and heartbeat. It is also the seat of habitual or automatic behavior.

Triune brain theory • The second part, the limbic system – 10% of the brain – seat of the emotions, certain kinds of memory, and glandular control • The largest part, the cerebral cortex – 85% of the brain – devoted to higher order thinking processes

Music & arts: • The limbic system – facilitate or inhibit learning and higher order thinking. – Positive emotions can facilitate higher order thinking skills whereas – Negative emotions, such as anger, hostility, and fear, can literally downshift the brain to basic survival thinking

Utilizing music and art Music • can lower stress, boost learning when used 3 different ways: – as a carrier - using melody or beat to encode content – as arousal - to calm down or energize – as a primer - to prepare specific pathways for learning content) impacts the immune system, and is an energy source for the brain Art: • • • provides many learners with avenues of expression and emotional conduits for learning and retaining information Is important in technology to aesthetically create pleasing power point presentations and multi-media displays to showcase work Multicultural awareness is improved through the study of art. Due to the diverse power of art, some educators think the “arts” should be named as the fourth “R. ”

Utilizing music and art • This quality of complexity stimulates brain activity in the frontal lobes and between the right and left hemispheres. • Knowing how to play an instrument furthers this increase in brain function • Research has shown that musicians have much more dense fibers in the corpus callosum than non-musicians, and this allows for much better special intelligence (recognition of abstract and spatial forms and constructs) among other things. • Musicians further process music equally in both hemispheres, unlike non-musicians who mostly only "hear" music with half their brain.

Utilizing music and art • Children with music training had significantly better verbal memory than their counterparts without training. • The longer the training, the better the verbal memory

Research • Researchers studied 90 boys between age 6 and 15. – 45 had musical training in the school’s string orchestra – – program, The other 45 participants had no musical training Gave the children verbal memory tests Musically trained students recalled significantly more words than the untrained After 30 minutes delays the trained students also retained more words than the control group • Verbal learning performance rose in proportion to the duration of musical training • Researchers say, even fewer than six years of musical training can boost verbal memory • More training = “greater extent of cortical reorganization in the left temporal region” • Students with better verbal memory probably will find it easier to learn in school”

Research • Follow-up – – 45 orchestra students. Thirty-three boys were still in the program; 9 had dropped out compared a third group of 17 children This beginner’s group initially had shown significantly lower verballearning ability than the more musically experienced boys. However, one year later, these newer students again showed significant improvement in verbal learning. • The dropouts showed no further improvement however, they didn’t lose their verbal memory advantage they gained before stopping the lessons

Research • Chan propose that music training during childhood is a kind of sensory stimulation that “somehow contributes to the reorganization-better development of the left temporal lobe in musicians • It is noted that it is too simplistic to divide brain functions (such as music) strictly into left or right, because “our brain works like a network system, it is interconnected, very cooperative

Benefits of music & arts in the Classroom • Music & art: – day more interesting = more learning – promote a higher order of thinking skills – provides a way to imagine, create and contribute to self-expression and creativity – provides perceptual motor development – encourages teamwork and individuality – fosters discipline and commitment – Math and science tend to be stronger in students who have a music or an arts background.

Benefits of music & arts in the Classroom • Music & Arts: – Encourages growth of cognitive and emotional psychomotor pathways – Enhances the quality of human expressions – Attention to nuance – Enhance recall, visual cues, imagery, attention, concentration and dexterity – Encourages hands on experience – Activates all parts of the brain – Stimulation, allows mental retention

Benefits of music & arts • The benefits conveyed by music education can be grouped in four categories: • Success in society • Success in school • Success in developing intelligence • Success in life

Benefits of music • Researchers are now using music as a therapeutic tool to rehabilitate stroke patients through Melodic Intonation therapy. • This allows them to speak & sing.

What has the art of neuroscience told us about the arts and learning? • The brain physically changes when we learn. • And that change is most extensive and powerful when emotion is part of the learning. • The chemicals of emotion (adrenalin, serotonin, and dopamine) act by modification of synapses. • The modification of synapses is the very root of learning. Changing connections in the brain is learning.

What has the art of neuroscience told us about the arts and learning? • the arts and music trigger emotion. • Artists create things that engage others, emotionally. And, of course creating itself is engaging—the artist also feels emotion. The arts, then, change the brain of both the creator, and the consumer.

What has the art of neuroscience told us about the arts and learning? • Another thing that changes synapses in the brain is Practice. We learn the things that we repeat the most. • But we repeat the things that we enjoy. So we enjoy the arts and repeat them over and over. This intensity of effort and focus is healthy for learning. • It also changes the brain.

Conclusions • children inherently have considerable musical competency • children spontaneously engage in musical play and clearly attend to and enjoy art • children exhibit cognitive and academic benefits from music and art education • music performance is very likely to be a premier activity for facilitating brain function • The arts connect learning experiences to the world of everyday work. • A human brain is about the quality of one's life. The arts are very central to the spirit and the quality of our lives.

References • • • Chaudhuri, T. (2002). A little thinking music. Serendip. Retrieved from http: //serendip. brynmawr. edu/bb/neuro 02/web 2/tchaudhuri. ht ml Zull, J. (2005). Arts, Neuroscience, and Learning. New Horizons for Learning. Retrieved from http: //www. newhorizons. org Vaidya, G. Music, Emotion and the Brain. Retrieved from http: //serendip. brynmawr. edu/bb/neuro 04/web 2/gvaidya. html Chan, T. , Petrie, G. ( 1998) The Brain and Well-Designed School Environments: Enhancing Student. Classroom Leadership 2, 3. Retrieved from http: //www. nea. org/teachexperience/braik 030312. html Fernandez, E. (2006). Notes on the Brain: Does music make you smarter? Miami Herald. April 25, 2006. Cromie, W. (1997). How Your Brain Listens to Music. Retrieved from http: //www. hno. harvard. edu/gazette/1997/11. 13/How. Your. Brain. Lis. htm l