How Music Can Affect The Brain Like a Drug

How Music Can Affect The Brain Like a Drug

Andrew Fraieli • February 14, 2014

  

        Now that I’ve got your attention with the idea of free drugs, what if I were to tell you that you’ve been downloading drugs off the internet for some time now? Well, according to some research, if you’ve been downloading music off the internet then you have. Research on this exact topic was actually being carried out here on campus by a Dr. Large, but he and his lab have moved to a different university. Music is very similar to drugs in many different ways and pretty much is one.

         Drugs are known for their ability to invoke intense emotional states, change a person’s behavior and change the way they perceive their surroundings. Music does the same thing. Ever hear your favorite song and get really excited? Well it may not seem like a drug, and you may think that the song is just making you happy, but happiness is a drug too. Technically, it’s not happiness, it’s called dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that is commonly released in the brain as a reward for something you do, making you feel good so that you do that thing again. It’s an evolutionary process that makes you keep doing necessary things like eating to stay alive and having sex to keep the human race alive. This chemical being released in your brain is the same effect of some drugs, the most common one being ecstasy. The effect isn’t the release of dopamine though. Ecstasy actually keeps the brain from letting the dopamine go away, but music affects the brain in a very similar, but less intense, way. It may not be as intense so as to cause hallucinations, but it can cause very intense feelings.

      Music is heavily connected to memory as well, so that connection helps music cause emotional reactions. A song heard for the first time will have drastically different effects on someone’s brain than when they hear a song that they heard when they fell in love.

      Music alone creates drug-like effects in your brain, but there are many other factors that can change how it affects your brain. Listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” through headphones while laying on a bed, relaxing with the lights off, will affect you in a much different way than listening to it in a crowded restaurant with other stuff going on around you. The way music affects someone is very different from person to person and depends a lot on the circumstances. People do drugs for different reasons just like people listen to music for different reasons. Someone may do cocaine to give them energy and get them excited just like someone may listen to a pop song to get them pumped. Someone may smoke weed to relax just like someone may put on jazz to relax.

      Music is something that we as a species absolutely love. We like listening to it and we love making it. Why? Well, that’s still being figured out. There are some theories, but we will probably never be able to find out exactly why because music is so different from person to person. Everyone likes music for their own reason, be it to remember a loved one or to bring yourself to a different place and escape from the world. Whatever reason that people love music, it’s usually to make them happy, something music is very good at. And it’s also technically a drug that is easy (and legal) to get, so it’s fun to say that. 

       Music is a vast and endless sea of creation, popularity and emotions. What is interesting is that no one ever sails the same sea. Everyone’s taste in music is different and this is almost as interesting a subject as music in itself. Music also affects everyone differently. No one ever hears the same song–it’s amazing how there are so many things that change how people hear music and how it affects them. Some people go soul-searching while others jump up and down in a crowded room pounding with bass. Everyone has a different perspective on enjoying music, none more correct than any other. One person may sail this sea in a little wooden boat while others prefer a yacht, some may prefer to get lost and see where they end up or some may have a set destination. How do you travel the sea of music?

Source : http://www.upressonline.com/2014/02/how-music-can-affect-the-brain-like-a-drug/

Accessed on Tuesday, 6 May 2014. 10:21 PM

By: Unknown On 4:42 PM

Continue Reading

How Does Music Affect Our Body and Brain?

How Does Music Affect Our Body and Brain?

Music appears to be processed in the right hemisphere of the brain. The way we experience music also affects our nervous system.

There are different neurons that respond according to what kind of music is playing. Music can effect hormones, encourage the production of cortisol, testosterone, and oxytocin. Music can even trigger a release of endorphins.

Beyond the biology and the actual responses of your body, there are definite responses of the mind as well. You’re aware of how you feel when you listen to music, but how do you know that it’s actually having any sort of effect on you? There is scientific evidence of the way it can affect your mind! It’s clearly more than just a suspicion — it’s fact!

The most famous experiment related to this is probably the one that was performed at the University of California at Irvine. College students were assigned to three different groups. The first group listened to Mozart’s sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. The second group listened to a relaxation tape. The third group listened to nothing at all.

After listening, they took a Stanford-Beinet reasoning test. The results were clear — those who had listened to Mozart had improved scores!

Many musical therapy experts recommend making music a part of your daily life, because its effects can improve with time. There is evidence that, over time, your language skills, creativity, happiness, and more, can improve with regular musical therapy.

The evidence is also stacked up strongly in favor of music’s healing power! A positive link has been found for those suffering from things like autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Tourette’s.

There are neuroscientists who are working to discover exactly why music has healing powers. After all, it’s pretty amazing that it can stimulate certain areas of the brain, speed healing, and decrease anxiety and increase optimism.

There are different components to music that can have an effect. Pitch, harmony, frequency, melody, and rhythm all effect the brain in different ways. We know that some of the brain locations are involved in helping to heal and soothe the body as well.

The brain can be taught and stimulated to perform better — and it seems that music is the perfect vehicle to do that.

However, there is science behind music and its healing power and Dr. Mike Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, set out to study this.

He used high-tech imaging to measure blood vessel size while listening to music. What he found was that the lining of the blood vessel relaxed and opened up. It also produced chemicals that help protect the heart.

Now when you add brainwave entrainment to music, you get something very special Super Mind Music…

The primary function of brainwave entrainment audio is to help TUNE the brainwave rhythms of the person to specific states. Brain science and EEG research dating back over 100 years has shown that specific brain rhythms are associated with specific emotional and cognitive outcomes. For example; it is known that when a dominant brainwave pattern or rhythm has a frequency of 10 cycles per second, it is very likely that the brain will produce the positive brain chemical serotonin. Serotonin is has a powerful effect on mood and increases sense of well being.

This is only one example of 1000’s of possibilities. Specifically, brainwave entrainment audios exerts its positive effects by offering specialized audio frequencies to the ears and skull that encourage the brains internal patterns and rhythms to match and then follow the frequencies in the audio. This is called “The Frequency Following Response”.

The Frequency Following response is a natural phenomena that occurs when the right frequencies are heard. Using this natural phenomena combined with advanced audio processing technology and over 100 years of brain research, we are able to create brainwave entrainment audios to help tune and optimize the brain for an unlimited amount of possibilities. ..

So with Super Mind Music, you get all the usual benefits of listening to music as mentioned above …and it can help you:

You get all the usual benefits of music as above, plus it can help:

* Build new neural pathway growth – increase in your brain power

* Balance the brain’s electrical activity – whole brain functioning

* Improve your memory

* Balance your emotions

* Multiply the benefits of The Mozart Effect

* Regulate your sleep cycles

* Release positive brain chemicals such as DHEA and Serotonin

* Elevate your mood

- See more at:

http://www.evolutionezine.net/how-does-music-affect-our-body-and-brain-plus-listen-to-super-mind-music-for-free/#sthash.9TjrF6qb.dpuf

http://www.evolutionezine.net/how-does-music-affect-our-body-and-brain-plus-listen-to-super-mind-music-for-free/

By: Unknown On 4:40 PM

Continue Reading