7 REASONS MAKING MUSIC IS BETTER ON YOUR BRAIN

It doesn't matter the age you are now, what is important is your passion and eagerness to learn to be able to play the instrument.

Various studies have found that engagement with music can lead to an improvement in brain development in children. (Photo: Getty Images)

“Music and the Brain” explores how music impacts brain function and human behavior, including reducing stress, pain, and symptoms of depression as well as improving cognitive and motor skills.

Music has a different positive impact on brain coordination. The researchers found that making music enrich the brain. In nowadays digital, the music industry took a big portion in the world. It is rare to find a church without a music instrument. Additionally, many people have made music their professional career and other people make music only for passion. Why? Music has several positive impacts on the normal functioning of the human brain. Just listening and playing music has amazing goodness to your brain.

Here are the reasons for making music is better for your brain.

1. Music increase brain concentration

A common belief shared by many is that listening to background music helps improve focus, blocks out distractions, and even makes a tedious task more enjoyable. Many of us listen to music while we work, thinking that it will help us to concentrate on the task at hand. And in fact, recent research has found that music can have beneficial effects on creativity.

Does listening to music increase your focus? Photograph: isstockphoto.com

In a study, seven out of eight radiologists found that baroque music increased mood and concentration on their work. Doing the work/studying with music background increases the focus and concentration of the brain.

2. Enriches connections between the left and right brain

Music activates both the left and right brain at the same time, and the activation of both hemispheres can maximize learning and improve memory

Studies have found music makers have more white matter in their corpus callosum, the bundle of neural wires connecting the brain's two hemispheres. This means greater communication between the left and right sides of the brain, which in turn may translate into numerous cerebral benefits, including faster communication within the brain and greater creative problem-solving abilities.

3. Boosts brain power

Did you play a musical instrument when you were growing up? Do you continue to play an instrument today? Neuroscientists continue to find evidence that musical training tremendously benefits a child’s brain development in ways that can improve cognitive function throughout his or her lifespan. A child trained to play music becomes better in decision making and brain processing while growing up.

babies who have music lessons smile more and communicate better. Source: Pixabay/ Public Domain

4. Promotes empathy

Empathy is connected with the perception, interpretation, and emotional reactions to music. Your capacity of detecting emotions in sound is lifted due to playing piano and guitar. Instrumentalists grow their ability to listen to the emotional sounding of the tones and key while playing an instrument which develops their empathy as well.

5. Slows brain aging

Brain gains made from playing an instrument apparently don't wane as you age. Studies show that speech-processing and memory benefits extend well into your golden years — even if your musical training stopped after childhood. 

Playing instrument slows aging in your brain (Photo: Stokkete/Shutterstock)

A Canadian study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that older people who had musical training when they were young could identify speech 20% faster than those with no training. In another study published in Neuropsychology, people aged 60 to 83 who had studied music for at least 10 years remembered more sensory information, including auditory, visual and tactile data, than those who studied for nine years or less.

6. Strengthens speech processing

Musical training is associated with various cognitive improvements and pervasive plasticity in human brains. Among its merits, musical training is thought to enhance the cognitive and neurobiological foundation of speech processing, particularly in challenging listening environments such as noisy restaurants.

Rwandan artist (The Ben) singing (Photograph: Afrobeatz)

The artists are well equipped with the compelling abilities to differentiate the pitches and tones because they spend much time on piano and guitar while producing their product. 

Researchers speculate that music and speech share common characteristics (pitch, timing, and timbre) and that the brain relies on the same neural pathways to process both.

7. Sharpens self-esteem

Not surprisingly, mental-health gains from musical mastery transfer into greater feelings of self-worth. In a study published in the Psychology of Music, a student who received three years of weekly piano lessons scored higher on a measure of self-esteem than a student who received no musical instruction. Another study of Florida secondary schools suggested kids who participated in a music-performance group at school felt less alienated and more successful.

As the research on the benefit of playing music keeps rolling in, perhaps we should all sit down at the piano or dig that old instrument out of the closet. Of course, if you never learned how to play, the best news is that it's never too late to start.