Music and the brain
I encourage you to read the entire article because some of the examples and explanations they gave were so amazing and powerful that a summary of it would not do it justice.
The next time you are going over your notes, or studying for that test put on some baroque style music because it will activate both sides of your brain to maximize your learning! But the key to the song selection is that it much be at or around 60 beats per minute. The little article seems to have a sort of disclaimer in saying that just because you listen to music while you are studying does guarantee that you will remember it better, it simply stimulates the other side of your brain so that your attention and retention is better and more active.
The article also states that baroque and classical era music is best to listen to because their beats and rhythm is based on math; it is ordered. So if you are looking for some "classical" background music, check out those time periods.
Fun fact for rock lovers. In the 70's teenagers would bring raw eggs to concerts and by the end of the show they would have been turned to hard boiled eggs. Researchers say this is due to the high, shrill frequencies and kind of "mix things up".
I encourage you to read the entire article because some of the examples and explanations they gave were so amazing and powerful that a summary of it would not do it justice.
The next time you are going over your notes, or studying for that test put on some baroque style music because it will activate both sides of your brain to maximize your learning! But the key to the song selection is that it much be at or around 60 beats per minute. The little article seems to have a sort of disclaimer in saying that just because you listen to music while you are studying does guarantee that you will remember it better, it simply stimulates the other side of your brain so that your attention and retention is better and more active.
The article also states that baroque and classical era music is best to listen to because their beats and rhythm is based on math; it is ordered. So if you are looking for some "classical" background music, check out those time periods.
Fun fact for rock lovers. In the 70's teenagers would bring raw eggs to concerts and by the end of the show they would have been turned to hard boiled eggs. Researchers say this is due to the high, shrill frequencies and kind of "mix things up".
I especially liked the part about rhythm. That is the most tangible aspect of music for me. The differences in rhythms between pieces of music dictates how people are motivated to act during the music. Certain songs make you tap your foot, others require you to head bang, still others can cause spontaneous dancing movements that you would not want anyone to witness. Certain pieces are choreographed with specific dance steps so the dance reflects the music (cheerleading, formal dance).
As far as music and studying goes, I personally listen to music when I study but it is definitely not classical or baroque. I find those types of music to be interesting, but way too much like being in a clothing store and frankly boring. I prefer listening to music with a good tempo without words or some jam-type stuff (phish, dead). Usually, I use pandora radio which is an online radio station where you create a station based on your favorite artist and it plays a bunch of music similar to it. This eliminates being distracted by looking for a song to play. Also, I think the main thing about listening to music for me is that I don't have any other things distracting me. Plus, in order to not be distracted by the music, I feel like I need to focus more on what I am reading or doing. Also, if I need to take a break, I just tune out to the music and get back at the studying or whatever when I'm ready. Of course, this is a study habit I have been using for a while now, so it may help that I'm used to doing it this way.
The author claims that slower music can lower the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate while faster music did just the opposite. While I don't necessarily disagree with this, I wonder what the reasoning for this is. My best guess is that faster music has something to do with sympathetic nervous system arousal as a result of something related to the fast music.
That part about the egg being hard boiled by the music is awesome. That must have been some serious shredding going on in the 70's.
I remember leaning about alot of this stuff durring my Our Musical Herritage class. The effects of music can be very dramatic, although it's effects can be different for different people. I am not sure if I have mentioned this in past blogs/comments, but I am currently doing reseach on the effects of music on aggressive driving. The research as proven to be very interesting, and we are finding that the music that we listen to while we are driving can have a profound effect on the types of behaviors we engage in while on the road. This is probably because when we listen to certain types of music (we are looking directly at genres such as rap, hard rock, and pop) it effects our mood. We hypothesis that when the driver is listening to more violent music (such as the rap or hard rock) they are more likely to engage in more aggressive behaviors (such as honking your horn, tailgating, general feelings of aggression and anger, along with others). Although the research is still in progress, it seems as though our hypothesis will be suppported. One thing that we seem to be finding, however, is that when people who are in the pop condition (something we thought would have a fairly neutral effect on aggressive driving) they some times become more angry or aggressive than those in the more violent conditions. While our team found this out, we started thinking about why this may be. We brainstormed that maybe it was because people really didn't like that type of music (we chose the song "Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus...we got alot of negative feedback about Miley). This led us to an entirely new study. We plan on looking at the data about music preference's effect on music driving. We thought about how someone's preferences of music could lead them to be a more aggressive person in general, not just while driving. Conversely, we thought that maybe people would be more relaxed if they were able to listen to their prefered type of music (maybe this would fit along the lines of slowing heart rate and blood pressure).
It's crazy what an effect music can have on the brain! activating different emotions and parts of the brain, and even promoting learning!
Music has such an affect on our lives it really is the soundtrack to our lives. This article had lots of information about how music affects the brain and how to better learn. It was interesting to find out that listening to music that has 60 beats per minute can help you learn a minimum of five times better, so it’s even possible to learn five times more. It was also interesting to find out that there was research done on how rock music can affect you, I guess my dad was right about hard core rock music, saying it can mess you up.
I also think that because music has such an affect on us this why certain songs are so well loved, it is because of the beat and the tempo. I am constantly telling my brother about my hypothesis that the reason why people like rap is not really because of the lyrics it is because of the beat.
I also found a youtube video that has lot of baroque music sampling. I don’t know how accurate it is about the information on the video but it does have a good listening mix if anyone wants to check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xozvnMZ7Jq4
Music is very important to me because it's something that I really enjoy. I like listening to music that matches how I'm feeling. For example, if I'm feeling angry, I may listen to Three Days Grace, or if I'm feeling happy, I may listen to my favorite band, Led Zeppelin. In addition, if I'm in a crappy mood, I know music is always there to lift my spirits. Another reason music is very important to me is because it helps me in many different ways. Besides helping me with my mood, music has helped me with learning and memorization. When I was in fourth grade, we were taught a song to help us remember the fifty states. To this day, I still remember that song. Thus, I do believe and agree that music helps with learning and memorization (recall).
I agree that a summary of the article won't do it justice, so I'm just going to point out some of the things that I found interesting. One of the things that I found interesting was that music helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence, and it improved Albert Einstein's learning ability. Another interesting thing was that responses to music are easily detected in the human body. Classical music slows down the heartbeat and breathing rate. In addition, baroque music brings down blood pressure and enhances the ability to learn. I also found it interesting that music doesn't just help humans but animals and plants as well.
The article and blog post were very enlightening and showed me that music is quite powerful.
If you would like to learn more information on how music affects mood, I'd suggest reading this article: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1428802/how_music_affects_your_mood.html?cat=72.
I apparently need to start listening to Mozart when I study! I really enjoyed this article. It was very interesting to see how music affects the brain and development. I was especially impressed by the psychologist Dr. George Lozanov who designed a system to teach foreign language to students with 1,000 words and phrases per day. Not only did the students learn it, but they retained the information as well! After four years they could recall the information they learned with 100% accuracy. In just thirty days he found that a foreign language could be learned with 85-100% efficiency by using baroque pieces, or music with 60 beats per minute.
It amazed me that music has been shown to help animals and plants as well. Such as help a hen lay more eggs. It has been proven that wheat grows faster when being played specific music as well. When rock music was played around plants, they shriveled and died. When rock was played in one box and Boch was played in another, almost all of the rats wanted to stay in the Boch box.
This article also discussed rhythm and how important it is. When we hear a rhythm our body automatically responds to it. Through rhythm we are able to perform day to day functions such as tying our shoes, or pouring our cereal.
When a rhythm is being played, it is impossible to tell if everyone feels it the same way. I found that interesting as well. Slow music slows down the heart rate, but faster music picks up every system in your body. The speed of music can affect your mood as well. Angry music could put you in a bad mood while slow light music could make you happy.
Overall, this article showed the importance of music in people’s lives. It was very interesting to read that the early Greeks even realized the importance of it on memory while research on it is considered new now. I learned a lot from this article and I realize now that I may need to be listening to Boch while doing my homework!
I really enjoyed this article. I had always heard that it is best to study while listening to classical music, but I had no idea there was so much science behind it. I thought the part about the autistic boy learning to tie his shoes while listening to Mozart was especially cool.
I also thought the study of music on memory was very interesting. Students divided into three groups then given a list of words to memorize. The first group had music played in the background and was asked to imagine the words in their mind. The second group only had background music, and the third group had no music at all. Groups 1 and 2 scored better on all tests-even a week after the initial testing had taken place! That's incredible evidence for the power that music can have on us.