Music & Emotions

Music & Emotions: can Music Really Make You a happier person? How many times have you turned to music to you to elevate even further in happy times, or sought the comfort of music as melancholy strikes?

Music touches us all. But only in recent times, scientists have tried to clarify and quantify the way music affects us on an emotional level. Research into the relationship between melody and the spirit indicates that listening to and playing music can actually how to change our brains, and so our body function.

It seems that the healing power of music, about body and mind, is only just beginning to understand, even though music therapy is not new. For many years, therapists are advocates of the use of music-both listen and study for the reduction of anxiety and stress, the relief of pain. And music is also recommended as a tool for positive change in mood and emotional States.

Michael E. DeBakey, who in 1966 became the first Surgeon successfully implanted an artificial heart, is on the record to say: "creating and performing music promotes self expression and self gratification offers while giving pleasure to others In medicine, increasing of published reports show that. music has a healing force on the patients."

Doctors now believe using music therapy in hospitals and nursing homes not only makes people feel better, but also makes them heal faster. And across the country, medical experts begin the new revelations about effects on the brain to music is to apply the treatment of patients.

In one study, researcher Michael Thaut and his team detailed how victims of stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease, who worked on music bigger, more balanced took steps than those where the therapy had no guidance.

Other researchers have discovered the sound of drums may affect how bodies work. Quoted in 2001 in an article in USA Today, Suzanne Hasner, Chairman of the music therapy department Berklee College of Music in Boston, says even those with dementia or head injury musical talent.

The article reported results of an experiment in which researchers from the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, Pa, followed 111 patients with cancer that drums played for 30 minutes per day. They found strengthens the immune system and elevated levels of cancer-fighting cells in a large number of patients.

"Deep down in our long-term memory is this well-rehearsed music," Hasner said. "It is processed in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala. Here is where you have the music that is playing on your wedding, your first love, the music that first dance. Such things can still be remembered, even in people with progressive diseases. It can be a window, a way to reach them ... "

The American Music Therapy Organization claims music therapy can provide "emotional intimacy with families and carers, relaxation for the whole family, and meaningful time together in a positive, creative way".

Scientists are making progress in his exploration into why music would have this effect. In 2001 Dr. Anne blood and Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal, used positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to see whether certain brain structures were stimulated by music.

In their study, blood and Zatorre asked 10 musicians, five men and five women, to stirring music. The subjects then had PET scans as they listened to four types of audio stimuli-the selected music, other music, General noise or silence. Each sequence was repeated three times in random order.

Blood said when the subjects of the music that gave them heard "chills," the PET scans detected activity in the parts of the brain that are stimulated by food and sex.

Why people developed as a biological-based valuation of music is still not clear. The appreciation of food and the sex drive evolved to to help the survival of the species, but "music was strictly not develop for survival purposes," Blood told the Associated Press at the time.

She also believes that because music activates the parts of the brain that make us happy, this suggests that it may benefit our physical and mental well-being.

This is good news for patients undergoing surgical operations that angst experienced in anticipation of those procedures.

Polish researcher, Medical Academy of Warsaw, Zbigniew Kucharski, studied the effect of acoustic therapy for anxiety management in dental patients. In the period of October 2