A human art that anyone on Earth can easily understand, music is one of the best things anyone can experience in life. No matter our age, there will always be a genre of music that bonds us together, grooving and dancing alongside each other to the beat of the song on play. While it is already established that listening to music has several advantages, did you know that playing an instrument and creating an entire song arrangement by yourself grants even more? Discover the reasons why and how picking up a musical instrument gives you a brain booster.
What Are The Benefits Of Listening To Music?
Learning what goes on inside our brains when listening to music is crucial to understanding its breadth of benefits. Neuroscientists have been able to gain a better picture of how music stimulates our brain using sophisticated machinery like Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners. Upon introducing subjects to these machines, they have discovered that specific tasks, such as reading and solving math problems, triggered activity in corresponding areas of the brain typically handling them.
However, when they observed the subjects listening to music, the results were much different, in that many parts of the brain lit up with activity to execute the sole task at hand. These areas all work simultaneously to process the music that is currently being heard, take it apart and comprehend individual elements like melody and rhythm, and then piece them all back together into a complete musical experience. All in all, this occurrence is the reason why jamming to your favourite tunes provides several scientifically proven benefits such as:
- Boosting the immune system by lowering the stress hormone cortisol
- Elevating mood and reducing depression by increasing the happy hormones, dopamine, and serotonin in the brain
- Significantly improving sleep quality when listening to classical or relaxing music before sleep
Why Is It Better To Play Music Yourself?
As mentioned previously, listening to music activates not just a small area of your brain but multiple parts of it. However, when one creates a musical or song arrangement themselves, the results are much more pronounced. Playing an instrument engages all aspects of the brain, so much so that it is equivalent to being engaged in a full-body workout routine. To properly play a musical instrument, numerous areas of the brain are engaged to simultaneously handle the processing of information from various sources, mainly the auditory, visual, and motor senses.
Over time, constant discipline and structured practice will result in strengthening those brain functions, the benefits of which can also be applied to other activities. One crucial advantage that musicians have over those who only listen to music is an increased volume and activity in their corpus callosum, the bridge in the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres, allowing messages to travel from one hemisphere to the other. This increase in volume and brain activity grants a larger highway with more diverse routes for information to travel, affording them with the following advantages:
- Dramatic increase in the effectiveness and creativity of problem-solving skills that can be applied in academic and social settings
- Higher levels of executive function, including mental skills such as flexible thinking, working memory, and self-control, all of which work together behind the scenes in our normal functioning in everyday life.
Does Age Matter When Learning An Instrument?
If you want to learn music, you would be glad to know that age is not a barrier when it comes to picking up a musical instrument, with results from a study showing that people aged 60 to 85 who took up piano fared better in terms of mental health and skills, in comparison to their peers. Specifically, they exhibited robust improvements in their memory, verbal fluency, information processing speeds, planning capabilities, and other cognitive functions in just six months.
Conclusion
Whether young or already of age, picking up a new instrument is a timeless life skill. At Studio72, we offer music lessons, such as guitar lessons and drum lessons, teaching you everything you need, from the basics to advanced techniques, to play the most popular instruments today. With the expertise of our music trainers and a fun-filled learning setting, you will always learn something new every day with our music courses!
