Music Influences The Brain

The brain is a powerful organ capable of innumeral functions. Music greatly influences the brain whether it is the process of creating the music or merely listening to it. For instance, just the act of listening to music shoots off fireworks in the brain that influences greater thought processes and focus. This is why a lot of people will put their favorite tunes on to complete homework or sleep because it enhances their focus and relaxes them. The act of creating music strengthens the brain even more. This is because the act of creating music and playing a musical instrument are slightly different in how the activities utilize the brain. Music has the ability to enhance brain functions and, through music therapy, repair damaged brain cells. …show more content…
In a study led by Ana Pinho, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, showed that pianists "with longer experience in improvising music had better and more targeted activity in the regions of the brain associated with creativity and the ability to transfer working memory to long-term memory" (Pinho). In a short video by Anita Collins entitled "How playing an instrument benefits the brain," she discussed how neuroscientists have had the ability to record brain functions of musicians performing on their instrument. The neuroscientists found that musicians, while playing music, engage almost every part of the brain and the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is in charge of transferring motor, sensory, and cognitive information throughout the brain. It is the messenger as well as the bridge between the two hemispheres.Therefore, by engaging the corpus callosum with creating music, musicians are able to tag each memory with something visual, conceptual, and auditory, thus committing information to memory very effectively because each of those messages the memory receives are passing through the visual, conceptual, and cognitive