What Can Music Do?

Music really affects our brains and bodies, more than we know!

Obviously, it’s tricky to measure how a song can lead to increased creativity, but it’s clear that music can inspire higher brain functioning — provided you like the particular piece of music playing, that is. As long as music can get you in a positive mood and increase your arousal levels, you just might reap immediate cognitive benefits.

--Check out the article below explaining how music really can help many aspects of our lives!

1. HAPPY/SAD MUSIC AFFECTS HOW WE SEE NEUTRAL FACES:

We can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this isn’t just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music.-- This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing.

2. AMBIENT NOISE CAN IMPROVE CREATIVITY

We all like to pump up the tunes when we’re powering through our to-do lists, right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best option. \

• Moderate Noise level is the sweet spot for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do
• In high Noise Levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.

3. OUR MUSIC CHOICES CAN PREDICT OUR PERSONALITY

Interestingly, some traits were more accurately predicted based on the person’s listening habits than others. For instance, openness to experience, extroversion, and emotional stability were the easiest to guess correctly. Conscientiousness, on the other hand, wasn’t obvious based on musical taste.

To break it down, here's the said connections:

• Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease
• Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease
• Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease
• Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing
• Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle
• Country and Western fans are hardworking and outgoing
• Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease
• Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle
• Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle
• Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing
• Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease
• Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease
• Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Of course, generalizing based on this study is very hard. However looking at the science of introverts and extroverts, there is some clear overlap.

4. MUSIC HELPS US EXERCISE

Listening to music can drown out our brain’s cries of fatigue. As our body realizes we’re tired and wants to stop exercising, it sends signals to the brain to stop for a break. Listening to music competes for our brain’s attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue, though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise. During high-intensity exercise, music isn’t as powerful at pulling our brain’s attention away from the pain of the workout.