The Impact Of Music On Cognitive Abilities And Emotions

Benefits of Music as a Companion for Cognitive Tasks

Discuss about the Music Psychology.

Many believe in the idea that suggests where there is life there is music and where there is music, there is life (Thompson 2015). People have been investing in music for a long time now that is because of the emotional and behavioural gains that they receive through music. This paper aims to reflect on the impact of music which it has on the cognitive functions and emotions of individuals. It further states the effect of music during the change in lifespan of an individual. From the studies it was successfully concluded that music does have an impact on the cognitive abilities, especially different types of music has different impacts. Regarding emotions it is safe to say that music helps to induce emotions in individuals through several suggested phenomenon. With the changing lifespan music can always be relied on for performance improvement in regards to memory retention and speed task efficacy.

Listening to music has been an old habit of mine, in order to relieve the effects of stress while engaging in any cognitive procedure like studying hard for a test, or completing an important assignment or while reading and writing. I never had any preference for only a particular genre of music and ended up listening to all kinds of music while studying without understanding its beneficial or harmful effects. However literature surveys showed that resorting to sedative music has better impact on the cognition abilities more than listening to simulative music.  Researchers have established that a particular kind of music can distract or make one focus on a cognitive task performance (Kelly et al. 2014). When I turned to sedative music, I realised the calming and relaxing effect it had which promoted better academic performance. This kind of music creates a soothing environment for students putting them at ease hence facilitating cognitive processing. Previous literature shows the insights of the neurophysiological priming effect due to cortical neuronal networks. According to Schellenberg and Weiss (2013), experiments conducted on a sample population showed that the phenomenon of arousal had a mediating role in the impact of music on performing a task. The elevated levels of arousal has the ability to enhance memory. From the results of the experiments the researchers concluded that music affected the psychological levels of arousal  and the brain function through a calcium/ calmodulin-dependent dopaminergic mediation. Music even modifies neurotransmitters which are also known to influence performance hence this way music can indirectly affect cognition. The stimuli of music increased the brain’s noradrenaline levels for which a higher dose of the β- adrenergic receptor antagonist, propranolol, was needed in order to block memory in the presence of a rhythmic auditory stimulus. This chain of experiments carried out thus provides proof that complex rhythmic auditory stimuli increase memory by promotion of medium levels of physiological arousal through variation in the noradrenaline activity at β- adrenoceptors. Neurophysiological changes in synaptic plasticity can occur due to exposure to auditory stimuli.  It is seen that sounds like wind chimes, classical music and complex sound effects that rat voices and rustling of leaves enriches the auditory stimuli conditions. It was also found that a number of indices of auditory cortex response increases the enrichment. The elevation of auditory functions on the synaptic plasticity might change or the non-auditory cortex might differ a number of indices of the auditory response of the cortex. This includes many beneficiary roles which needs to be investigated(Särkämö, Tervaniemi and Huotilainen 2013). From the above discussion I am now aware that how listening to music rather to be specific, how the type of music which I am listening to is making an impact on my cognitive abilities and functions.

Understanding the Impact of Music on Cognitive Abilities

Music is something that is far more powerful than language to express or evoke emotions. A full range of human emotion can be stirred by music from sad and nostalgic to happy, calm and joyous (Short and Dingle 2016). The adolescent period is a tough time for us, even I have faced certain emotional turmoil, especially as a student during this period. Music has been my companion this then. From my point of view, music is the greatest gift to mankind as it has the ability to allow people experience their emotions without having to live though the burden of life events that lead to them. The emotions can be experienced in a controlled manner and in comfortable circumstances. According to Professor Daniel Levitin, who is a neuroscientist and a composer, there is an intricate connection between the emotional language of the brain and its centre of memory and its language. The length of this connection is variable among individuals which enables the musicians to have the expertise to create music which is full of emotional quality. Starting from the Beatles classics to Metallica and Led Zeppelin, there is a different experience for every type of music depending on the preferred list. It is of such elevated level of experience in certain people and musicians that it enables them to imagine and create music that others simply cannot, which is like creating a canvas of their own which the image of sound. In the studies carried out by Juslin, Harmat and Eerola (2014), six psychological mechanisms were hypothesized that were believed to be involved in the implementation of emotions through music. These were reflexes of the brain stem, evaluative conditioning, emotional contagion, visual imagery, episodic memory and musical expectancy.

The reflex system of the brain is a process where a particular emotion is induced because various fundamental acoustical characteristics of the music are registered by the brain stem to signal a highly important and immediate event. Responses of such kind are reflected by the impact of auditory sensations, basically music as sound in the most fundamental sense. The process of evaluating conditioning is when an emotion is induced by a piece of music only due to the fact that it has been impaired with other beneficial and harmful stimuli.  Evaluative conditioning (EC) is also illustrated as affective learning, emotional conditioning, fear conditioning and preference conditioning (Juslin 2013). The next is emotional contagion which is the process where an emotion is evoked by the music since the listener understands the emotional expression of the music, and then copies this expression internally, which then through the action of peripheral feedback coming from the muscles, or by a more direct action of the relevant emotional representations in the brain, comes back to an evocation of the same emotion. The process of visual imagery helps to induce emotions because it conjures up visual images while a person is listening to a piece of music. The emotions that are experienced are due to a close intermingling between the music and the images that are being visualised. Finally, episodic memory is a phenomenon through which an emotion is induced in the individual because the music is able to evoke a memory of a life event of the listener. A person may experience what is called a reminiscence bump due to the episodic memory.

Music and Emotions: The Connection Between Emotional Language and Memory

From a very young age I have been exposed to good music through my family. Music has always helped me to relieve stress during hard times and to remain happy inspite of the emotional turmoil. Better than that music has helped me to work better towards my academics and maintained my cognition abilities by helping me concentrate and retaining a powerful memory. However, at one point of life we will all experience deficit in inhibiting the irrelevant information also there will be lack of undivided concentration for performing a task due to the natural process of ageing. At this time of our life music can provide a solution to get better results. Although much studies have not been done regarding the impact of music on the brain functions of older adults, however a recent study managed to show that the effects of background music on brain processing speed and two kinds of memory namely episodic and semantic. Experimental results showed that in older adults the processing speed task was enhanced when music was played. In case of memory performance, both for episodic and semantic memory tasks both beneficial and harmful impact of background music conditions provided an efficient performance gain over the silence and white noise conditions, which however had no significant difference in their effect (MacDonald, Kreutz and Mitchell 2013). Apart from this several other physiological, psychological, social, behavioural and cognitive effects were seen as result of the impact of music on our changing lifespan. A range of self-selected music listening has been seen to have an impact on the systolic blood pressure. Sakka and Juslin (2017) suggested that bodily response are one of the major experiences of music. In regards to the psychological changes, studies have found out that music had an impact on the mood changes. As it was seen from the studies of Swaminathan and Schulenburg (2015), listening to music had a profound effect on state of relaxation. Social aspect was the effects of music on communication satisfaction and sociability. Considering the above discussions I have realised that resorting to music can have a beneficial effect on the later stages of my life. It will be better to focus on music that is more soothing and relaxing.

From the above discussions in the paper, it can be concluded that the impact of music on the cognitive abilities is evident. It was seen that the academic performance was enhanced by listening to a particular genre of music, rather to be specific sedative music which facilitates complex cognitive functions in an individual. Several mechanisms related to the brain, neural plasticity and auditory functions have also been seen from the literature surveys. In the case of relation between music and emotion, studies suggested that there is an intricate relationship between them and music results in evoking emotions and helps and individual to experience emotion in a controlled environment, without having to relive the experiences in life. Along with these aspects music has also been seen to have an effect on the changing lifespans. With the natural process of ageing the power of memory retention and undivided focus for a work will gradually diminish. During this time it is advisable to turn to music in order to stay healthy and happy.

References

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