Music and cognitive theory

Music and Cognitive Theory

Music tends to have a phenomenal power over the human mind and emotions. A movie without a soundtrack would seem so dull and boring. If you try closing your eyes and picture a scene with music, it gives a completely different mood and emotion to it. Even before the music culture that exists today, human beings were still making some kind of music. They made flutes with the bones and jaw harps. Music has always had an innate appreciation for humans. Pleasant sounds lure a person to identify its source, whereas a shrill, unpleasant sound makes a person uncomfortable.

Studies show that while an orchestral concert, the pleasure centers of a human brain are activated. These are also active while a person has chocolate, engages in sexual acts or during the intake of stimulants like hash and cocaine. When a baby is being formed inside a mother's womb, it has the tendency to absorb the external sounds of the world and feels them all the same way that any other human would. Numerous brain cells react upon hearing a sound. The brain also has the ability to recognize the repetitive stimuli and establish a connection with them. The mother's voice becomes a source of comfort for the baby as soon as it starts recognizing it. The emotional and psychological attachment that is formed among the two is a perfect example of the how the brain stimuli work. Hence, the mother's voice acts as the first source of music for the baby (Mursell, 1970, p. 27; Weinberger, 2004).

Music Changes in the brain structure:

The Mozart Syndrome states that the babies who listen to classical music have a greater cognitive ability. Research shows that music has the ability to change the brain structure of a human. In an experiment, different kinds of brain structures were examined. The results indicated that the corpus callosum of a musician tends to be larger than that of a normal human being. The auditory cortex and plannum temporale also showed evidence of the difference between a normal brain and that of a professional musician (Schlaugh et al., 2002). There were also larger amounts of neuronal cells in the cortex of the musician's brain and an access of this grey matter in the auditory, motor and visuospatial areas of the cortex and the cerebellum.

Music and Attention Span:

Music has the ability to balance the brain hemispheres and tend to provide a stronger link among the various parts of the brain, enabling the parts to perform their functions more efficiently. The studies of music show that regular listening of music enables the person to have greater communication skills and it instills the ability to excel, reflect, create and integrate these musical skills. It also increases the attention span of a person and sharpens the memory. It sharpens the abstract learning ability which is required by a person in subjects such as science and math (Ratey, 2002, p.204).

Music and Memory:

The brain's ability to communicate information leads to the formation of synapses. These synaptic connections are made stronger when the mind is put to use and they tend to weaken with an idle mind. These synaptic connections enable the brain to process faster and function more efficiently when their bonds are stronger. The involvement in music ensures the proper functioning of various parts of the brain. The auditory, visual, kinesthetic, perceptual, symbolic, linguistic, reading-cognitive, gross muscle coordination and the motivational and pleasure seeking systems are all put to use and they perform their function to interpret and feel the music. These stimuli send across messages after the interpretation of whether the sound feels nice and pleasurable to the mind or if it causes discomfort. The process of listening to music strengthens the bond between these parts and ensures the proper functioning hence making the mind stronger and ensuring its efficiency levels.

The two processes that explain the growth of these synaptic bonds are the experience expectant processes and the experience dependant bonds. The experience expectant processes focus on the learning process of the brain through the experience it gains from the extrinsic factors. This process strengthens the ability of the brain to work faster and learn and adapt to the environment around. The idle state of the mind where it gains no experience slows down the functioning of the brain and weakens the synaptic bonds, the brain's functioning and its strength. The experience dependant processes focus on the development of the brain and the synaptic bonds through the external factors such as listening to music. However, the basic role of both the leaning processes is how the brain stimuli are put to work and the synaptic bonds are strengthened through the role of music, be it verbal or physical (Strickland, 2001).

Music possesses the power to occupy and take over someone's emotions and bring back memories of a particular event or moment in life that is lost inside the person. In musical therapy, the music acts as a medium to open the closed doors in one's mind or give way to the parts that have stopped functioning otherwise. Music helps recover one's life, its meaning and the memories that are buried deep inside.

Improvisation and Creativity:

The improvisation of music brings out the creativity of the human mind and it involves how a person adapts to different environments, problem solving, and the use of natural language. All of this is not exactly laid out for the person. Instead, it is the human brain's capability and interpretation (Limb and Braun, 2008).

Emotions of Music:

There is a certain feel of emotions while listening to music. This may not be real but during a performance or during the process of music improvisation, the medial prefrontal cortex plays the role of self-expression and brings up emotions, the lateral prefrontal cortex which acts as a self-monitor, closes down and its function is minimized. The person gets lost in the music and feels the emotions that are deep rooted or even those that may not have anything to do with the situation (Charles, 2008).