Hand-Clapping Songs Improve Motor and Cognitive Skills, Research Shows

A researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, revealing a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.

"We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities," explains Dr. Idit Sulkin a member of BGU's Music Science Lab in the Department of the Arts. "We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors."

Dr. Warren Brodsky, the music psychologist who supervised her doctoral dissertation, said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games may be more at risk for developmental learning problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas. The children's teachers also believe that social integration is better for these children than those who don't take part in these songs."

As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education sanctioned music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training -- each lasting a period of 10 weeks.

"Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.

During the study, "Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks," Dr. Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports.

"This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through," Dr. Sulkin observes. "The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children's needs -- emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."

Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects that hand-clapping songs have on children's motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, prompting countless parents to obtain a "Baby Mozart" CD for their children.

This study also demonstrates that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart music (.i.e., the 'Mozart Effect') does not improve spatial task performance more than 10 minutes hand clapping songs training or 10 minutes exposure to silence.

Sulkin also found that hand-clapping song activity has a positive effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense. "These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they start clapping, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."

Sulkin grew up in a musical home. Her father, Dr. Adi Sulkin, is a well-known music educator who, in the 1970s and 1980s, recorded and published over 50 cassettes and videos depicting Israeli children's play-songs, street-songs, holiday and seasonal songs, and singing games targeting academic skills.

"So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood," she noted.

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Time Invested In Practicing Pays Off For Young Musicians, Research Shows

A Harvard-based study has found that children who study a musical instrument for at least three years outperform children with no instrumental training—not only in tests of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity (skills honed by the study of a musical instrument), but also on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion (skills not normally associated with music).

A total of 41 eight- to eleven-year-olds who had studied either piano or a string instrument for a minimum of three years were compared to 18 children who had no instrumental training. Children in both groups spent 30-40 minutes per week in general music classes at school, but those in the instrumental group also received private lessons learning an instrument (averaging 45 minutes per week) and spent additional time practicing at home.

While it is no surprise that the young musicians scored significantly higher than those in the control group on two skills closely related to their music training (auditory discrimination and finger dexterity), the more surprising result was that they also scored higher in two skills that appear unrelated to music—verbal ability (as measured by a vocabulary IQ test) and visual pattern completion (as measured by the Raven's Progressive Matrices). And furthermore, the longer and more intensely the child had studied his or her instrument, the better he or she scored on these tests.

Studying an instrument thus seems to bring benefits in areas beyond those that are specifically targeted by music instruction, but that is not the end of the story. Although this research sheds light on the question of whether connections between music and other, unrelated skills do exist, more studies examining the causal relationships between instrumental music training, practice intensity, and cognitive enhancements are needed.

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Mozart's Music Does Not Make You Smarter, Study Finds

For over 15 years, scientists have been discussing alleged performance-enhancing effects of hearing classical music. Now, University of Vienna researchers Jakob Pietschnig, Martin Voracek and Anton K. Formann present quite definite results on this so-called "Mozart effect" in the US journal Intelligence. These new findings suggest no evidence for specific cognitive enhancements by mere listening to Mozart's music.

In 1993, in the journal Nature, University of California at Irvine psychologist Frances H. Rauscher and her associates reported findings of enhanced spatial task performance among college students after exposure to Mozart's music. Mozart's 1781 sonata for two pianos in D major (KV 448) supposedly enhanced students' cognitive abilities through mere listening. Scientific articles only rarely attract such public attention and excitement as was the case for Rauscher's publication: the New York Times wrote that listening to Mozart would give college-bound students an edge in the SAT. What is more, other commentators hailed Mozart music as a magic bullet to boost children's intelligence.

In the course of this hype, then Georgia governor Zell Miller even issued a bill in 1998, ensuring that every mother of a newborn would receive a complimentary classical music CD. In the same year, Florida's state government passed a law, requiring state-funded day-care centers to play at least one hour of classical music a day.

Debunking the myth

In the scientific community, however, Rauscher's finding was met with scepticism, as researchers around the world found it surprisingly hard to replicate. University of Vienna psychologists Jakob Pietschnig, Martin Voracek, and Anton K. Formann now report the findings of their meta-analysis of the "Mozart effect" in the US journal Intelligence.

Their comprehensive study of studies synthesizes the entirety of the scientific record on the topic. Retrieved for this systematic investigation were about 40 independent studies, published ones as well as a number of unpublished academic theses from the US and elsewhere, totalling more than 3000 participants.

The University of Vienna researchers' key finding is clear-cut: based on the cumulated evidence, there remains no support for gains in spatial ability specifically due to listening to Mozart music.

"I recommend listening to Mozart to everyone, but it will not meet expectations of boosting cognitive abilities," says Jakob Pietschnig, lead author of the study. A specific "Mozart effect," as suggested by Rauscher's 1993 publication in Nature, could not be confirmed. The meta-analysis from the University of Vienna exposes the "Mozart effect" as a legend, thus concurring with Emory University psychologist Scott E. Lilienfeld, who in his recent book "50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology" already ranked the "Mozart effect" number six.

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Music Training 'Tunes' Human Auditory System

A newly published study by Northwestern University researchers suggests that Mom was right when she insisted that you continue music lessons -- even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future.

The study, which will appear in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds. This finding has broad implications because it applies to sound encoding skills involved not only in music but also in language.

The findings indicate that experience with music at a young age in effect can "fine-tune" the brain's auditory system. "Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children -- whether musically exceptional or not -- in a wide range of learning activities," says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.

"Our findings underscore the pervasive impact of musical training on neurological development. Yet music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight. That's a mistake," says Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology and professor of communication sciences and disorders.

"Our study is the first to ask whether enhancing the sound environment -- in this case with musical training -- will positively affect the way an individual encodes sound even at a level as basic as the brainstem," says Patrick Wong, primary author of "Musical Experience Shapes Human Brainstem Encoding of Linguistic Pitch Patterns." An old structure from an evolutionary standpoint, the brainstem once was thought to only play a passive role in auditory processing.

Using a novel experimental design, the researchers presented the Mandarin word "mi" to 20 adults as they watched a movie. Half had at least six years of musical instrument training starting before the age of 12. The other half had minimal (less than 2 years) or no musical training. All were native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin, a tone language.

In tone languages, a single word can differ in meaning depending on pitch patterns called "tones." For example, the Mandarin word "mi" delivered in a level tone means "to squint," in a rising tone means "to bewilder," and in a dipping (falling then rising) tone means "rice." English, on the other hand, only uses pitch to reflect intonation (as when rising pitch is used in questions).

As the subjects watched the movie, the researchers used electrophysiological methods to measure and graph the accuracy of their brainstem ability to track the three differently pitched "mi" sounds.

"Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," says Wong, director of Northwestern's Speech Research Laboratory and assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders.

The research by co-authors Wong, Kraus, Erika Skoe, Nicole Russo and Tasha Dees represents a new way of defining the relationship between the brainstem -- a lower order brain structure thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in complex processing -- and the neocortex, a higher order brain structure associated with music, language and other complex processing.

These findings are in line with previous studies by Wong and his group suggesting that musical experience can improve one's ability to learn tone languages in adulthood and level of musical experience plays a role in the degree of activation in the auditory cortex. Wong also is a faculty member in Northwestern's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program.

The findings also are consistent with studies by Kraus and her research team that have revealed anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some children with learning disabilities which can be improved by auditory training.

"We've found that by playing music -- an action thought of as a function of the neocortex -- a person may actually be tuning the brainstem," says Kraus. "This suggests that the relationship between the brainstem and neocortex is a dynamic and reciprocal one and tells us that our basic sensory circuitry is more malleable than we previously thought."

Overall, the findings assist in unfolding new lines of inquiry. The researchers now are looking to find ways to "train" the brain to better encode sound -- work that potentially has far-reaching educational and clinical implications. The study was supported by Northwestern University, grants from the National Institutes of Health and a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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Music, Not Gadgets, Related to Teenagers' Headaches

Use of most electronic media is not associated with headaches, at least not in adolescents. A study of 1025 13-17 year olds, published in the open access journal BMC Neurology, found no association between the use of computer games, mobile phones or television and the occurrence of headaches or migraines. However, listening to one or two hours of music every day was associated with a pounding head.

Astrid Milde-Busch, from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the links between exposure to electronics and the prevalence and type of headaches. She said, "Excessive use of electronic media is often reported to be associated with long-lasting adverse effects on health like obesity or lack of regular exercise, or unspecific symptoms like tiredness, stress, concentration difficulties and sleep disturbances. Studies into the occurrence of headaches have had mixed results and for some types of media, in particular computer games, are completely lacking."

The researchers interviewed 489 teenagers who claimed to suffer from headaches and 536 who said they did not. When the two groups were compared, no associations were found for television viewing, electronic gaming, mobile phone usage or computer usage. Daily consumption of music was significantly associated with suffering from any type of headache, although, as Milde-Busch points out, "It cannot be concluded whether the habit of listening to music is the cause of frequent headaches, or the consequence in the sense a self-therapy by relaxation."

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How Music Treat Emotional and Physical Pain

Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever before at how music conveys emotion.

The project, at Glasgow Caledonian University is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The research could lead to advances in the use of music to help regulate a person's mood, and promote the development of music-based therapies to tackle conditions like depressive illnesses. It could help alleviate symptoms for people who are dealing with physical pain and even lead to doctors putting music on a prescription that is tailored to suit the needs of an individual.

"The impact of a piece of music on a person goes so much further than thinking that a fast tempo can lift a mood and a slow one can bring it down. Music expresses emotion as a result of many factors," says audio engineering specialist Dr Don Knox, project leader. "These include the tone, structure and other technical characteristics of a piece. Lyrics can have a big impact too. But so can purely subjective factors: where or when you first heard it, whether you associate it with happy or sad events and so on. Our project is the first step towards taking all of these considerations -- and the way they interact with each other -- on board."

Raymond MacDonald, Professor of Music Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University, is also playing a central role in the initiative.

The team has already carried out an unprecedentedly detailed audio analysis of pieces of music, identified as expressing a range of emotions by a panel of volunteers.

Each volunteer listens to pieces of previously unheard contemporary popular music* and assigns each one a position on a graph. One axis measures the type of feeling (positivity or negativity) that the piece communicates; the other measures the intensity or activity level of the music. The research team then assess the audio characteristics that the pieces falling into each part of the graph have in common.

"We look at parameters such as rhythm patterns, melodic range, musical intervals, length of phrases, musical pitch and so on," says Dr Knox. "For example, music falling into a positive category might have a regular rhythm, bright timbre and a fairly steady pitch contour over time. If tempo and loudness increase, for instance, this would place the piece in a more 'exuberant' or 'excited' region of the graph."

The team are now about to start their assessment of the impact of lyrics, and then hope to focus on how individuals use and experience music at a subjective level.

The ultimate aim is to develop a comprehensive mathematical model that explains music's ability to communicate different emotions. This could make it possible, within a few years, to develop computer programs which identify pieces of music that will influence a individual's mood (e.g. to motivate them when exercising or when revising for exams), meet their emotional needs and help them cope better with physical pain.

"By making it possible to search for music and organize collections according to emotional content, such programs could fundamentally change the way we interact with music," says Dr Knox. "Some online music stores already tag music according to whether a piece is 'happy' or 'sad'. Our project is refining this approach and giving it a firm scientific foundation, unlocking all kinds of possibilities and opportunities as a result."

'Emotion Classification in Contemporary Music' is a 3 year project due for completion at the end of October 2010. It is receiving EPSRC funding of just over £82,000.

* Music classified by the volunteers consists of contemporary popular music not available on general release, in order to eliminate any personal, subjective connotations any of the pieces may have for the volunteers. "This focus on popular music is an innovative feature of our project as previous studies on music's emotional content have concentrated on classical music," says Dr Knox. "We think concentrating on popular music is important as our work could have important implications for the use of personal music players and on how people interact with their music collections."

In this project, digital music files are analyzed using advanced signal processing techniques. Many measures are based on extraction of the signal frequency spectrum over time. From this information, measures of intensity, timbre and rhythm can be calculated, in addition to estimates of musical pitch and tonality.

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Software Engineers Develop Biofeedback Method for Singing Lessons

Keeping a beat or staying on-key can be acquired skills. Software engineers have designed a new software package to make that easier, turning your computer into a singing teacher. The system plots the sound waves produced by your vocal cords, allowing you to adjust them to the desired pitch in real time. The system is also being used to treat speech impediments and to help kids learn how to read.

Want to learn to sing? Now, your computer can coach you to carry a tune.

Ashley West is learning to sing and her vocal coach is a computer program called Singing Coach.

Chief technology officer Ken Spiegel works behind the scenes with this new Singing Coach software. Spiegel, Vice President and General Manager of Electronic Learning Products, Inc. in Tampa, Fla., says: "Your vocal chords vibrate. They create a pitch and frequency that's measured by the computer." It's plotted in real-time on a graph and the goal is to stay in the blue box.

"It's great to see the box and visually stay in it," West says.

This software is not just about singing; it's also being used in schools to help kids improve their reading. A study revealed students who used the Singing Coach program for nine weeks improve their reading one to three grade levels. Susan Homan, a professor of literacy at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla., and study author, says, "I have never seen that kind of growth in such a short period of time."

Bekah Bychowski went up two grade levels in her reading skills. "I wasn't stuttering when I was reading books out loud in class."

The singing coach software is now being used in seven schools with kids from fourth grade to high school. There are three versions of the software including kids, family and a professional version. The cost ranges from $30 to $100.

BACKGROUND: Singing Coach software teaches how to sing or improve singing ability, and may even help children with cochlear implants improve their speaking skills.

HOW IT WORKS: The software includes a vocal range analyzer and a pitch tracking line that gives real-time feedback on singers' performances as they sing. This enables them to hear, note for note, exactly where their pitch, rhythm and tempo need to be corrected. The software is easy to install and requires no previous musical training or experience to use. It comes with 20 singing lessons and a high-fidelity headset with a built-in microphone for hands-free singing. At the end of each performance, the software "scores" the singer. Once a skill is mastered, the program graduates the singer to the next level. A more advanced version, Singing Coach Unlimited, offers access to more than 10,000 songs and also allows singers to compose their own songs, and compete with friends to see who can get the highest score.

WHAT IS PITCH: Sound waves are pressure waves. A vibrating object creates a disturbance in the surrounding air, much like a stone cast in a quiet pond will cause waves to ripple outward from the spot where the stone hit. All sound waves have wavelength and frequency. Objects that vibrate very quickly create short wavelengths and a high-pitched sound. Objects that vibrate very slowly create long wavelengths and a low-pitched sound. Frequency measures the speed of vibration in a unit called a Hertz (Hz), and 1 Hz is equivalent to 1 vibration per second. Pluck a string on a guitar, and it might vibrate 500 times per second, so the sound wave's frequency would be 500 Hertz. Pitch simply denotes those frequencies within the range of human hearing (from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz). The faster the rate of vibration, the higher the pitch; the slower the rate of vibration, the lower the pitch.

PITCH PERFECT: Perfect, or absolute, pitch includes two separate skills: the ability to name a musical tone once it is heard, and the ability to sing a named tone on command. It is sometimes confused with relative pitch: the ability to sing or play accurately given a starting note.

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Music Shows Potential in Stroke Rehabilitation

Music therapy provided by trained music therapists may help to improve movement in stroke patients, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. A few small trials also suggest a wider role for music in recovery from brain injury.

More than 20 million people suffer strokes each year. Many patients acquire brain injuries that affect their movement and language abilities, which results in significant loss of quality of life. Music therapists are trained in techniques that stimulate brain functions and aim to improve outcomes for patients. One common technique is rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS), which relies on the connections between rhythm and movement. Music of a particular tempo is used to stimulate movement in the patient.

Seven small studies, which together involved 184 people, were included in the review. Four focused specifically on stroke patients, with three of these using RAS as the treatment technique. RAS therapy improved walking speed by an average of 14 metres per minute compared to standard movement therapy, and helped patients take longer steps. In one trial, RAS also improved arm movements, as measured by elbow extension angle.

"This review shows encouraging results for the effects of music therapy in stroke patients," said lead researcher Joke Bradt of the Arts and Quality of Life Research Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, US. "As most of the studies we looked at used rhythm-based methods, we suggest that rhythm may be a primary factor in music therapy approaches to treating stroke."

Other music therapy techniques, including listening to live and recorded music, were employed to try to improve speech, behaviour and pain in patients with brain injuries, and although outcomes in some cases were positive, evidence was limited. "Several trials that we identified had less than 20 participants," said Bradt. "It is expected that larger samples sizes will be used in future studies to enable sound recommendations for clinical practice."

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Looking For The Origins Of Music In The Brain

Music serves as a natural and non-invasive intervention for patients with severe neurological disorders to promote long-term memory, social interaction and communication. However, there is currently no plausible explanation of its neural basis for why and how music affects physical and psychosocial responses.

Origins of music perception in humans may have their foundation in animal communication calls, as evidenced here in non-human primates. Many speech sounds and animal vocalizations, for instance, contain components, commonly referred to as complex tones, which consist of a fundamental frequency (f0) and higher harmonics.

Using electrophysiological recording techniques to study the neuronal activities in the auditory cortex of awake monkeys, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center's have shown neurons tuned to the fundamental frequencies and harmonic sounds, and such neural mechanisms of harmonic processing lay close to tonotopically organized auditory areas. They presented their findings at the 39th annual meeting Society of Neuroscience.

"The understanding of neural mechanism of 'innate' music features in non-human primates will facilitate an improved understanding of music perception in the human nervous system," explains Yuki Kikuchi, PhD, a research associate in the department of physiology and biophysics. "This will allow a neurobiological framework from which to understand the basis of the effectiveness of music therapeutic interventions."

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Kikuchi reports no related financial interests.

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Background Music Can Impair Performance

For decades research has shown that listening to music alleviates anxiety and depression, enhances mood, and can increase cognitive functioning, such as spatial awareness. However, until now, research has not addressed how we listen to music. For instance, is the cognitive benefit still the same if we listen to music whilst performing a task, rather than before it? Further, how does our preference for a particular type of music affect performance?

A new study from Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that listening to music that one likes whilst performing a serial recall task does not help performance any more than listening to music one does not enjoy.

The researchers explored the 'irrelevant sound effect' by requiring participants to perform serial recall (recall a list of 8 consonants in presentation order) in the presence of five sound environments: quiet, liked music (e.g., Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Stranglers, and Arcade Fire), disliked music (the track "Thrashers" by Death Angel), changing-state (a sequence of random digits such as "4, 7, 1, 6") and steady-state ("3, 3, 3"). Recall ability was approximately the same, and poorest, for the music and changing-state conditions. The most accurate recall occurred when participants performed the task in the quieter, steady-state environments. Thus listening to music, regardless of whether people liked or disliked it, impaired their concurrent performance.

Lead researcher Nick Perham explains: "The poorer performance of the music and changing-state sounds are due to the acoustical variation within those environments. This impairs the ability to recall the order of items, via rehearsal, within the presented list. Mental arithmetic also requires the ability to retain order information in the short-term via rehearsal, and may be similarly affected by their performance in the presence of changing-state, background environments."

Although music can have a very positive effect on our general mental health, music can, in the circumstances described, also have negative effects on cognitive performance. Perham remarks, "Most people listen to music at the same time as, rather than prior to performing a task. To reduce the negative effects of background music when recalling information in order one should either perform the task in quiet or only listen to music prior to performing the task."

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How Music Affects Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes Health

Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal.

Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:

* Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.

* Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.

* State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.

* Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

Using Music Therapy:
With all these benefits that music can carry, it's no surprise that music therapy is growing in popularity. For more information on music therapy, visit the American Music Therapy Association's website.

Using Music On Your Own:
While music therapy is an important discipline, you can also achieve benefits from music on your own. This article on music, relaxation and stress management can explain more of how music can be an especially effective tool for stress management, and can be used in daily life. (about.com)

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How Music Affects Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes Health

Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:

* Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.

* Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.

* State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.

* Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

about.com

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Computer Program Creates Music Based On Emotions

A group of researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) has developed Inmamusys, a software program that can create music in response to emotions that arise in the listener. By using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, the program enables original, copyright-free and emotion-inspiring music to be played continuously.

UGR researchers Miguel Delgado, Waldo Fajardo and Miguel Molina decided to design a software program that would enable a person who knew nothing about composition to create music. The system they devised, using AI, is called Inmamusys, an acronym for Intelligent Multiagent Music System, and is able to compose and play music in real time.

If successful, this prototype, which has been described recently in the journal Expert Systems with Applications, looks likely to bring about great changes in terms of the intrusive and repetitive canned music played in public places.

Miguel Molina, lead author of the study, says that while the repertoire of such canned music is very limited, the new invention can be used to create a pleasant, non-repetitive musical environment for anyone who has to be within earshot throughout the day.

Everyone's ears have suffered the effects of repetitively-played canned music, be it in workplaces, hospital environments or during phone calls made to directory inquiries numbers. On this basis, the research team decided that it would be "very interesting to design and build an intelligent system able to generate music automatically, ensuring the correct degree of emotiveness (in order to manage the environment created) and originality (guaranteeing that the tunes composed are not repeated, and are original and endless)."

Inmamusys has the necessary knowledge to compose emotive music through the use of AI techniques. In designing and developing the system, the researchers worked on the abstract representation of the concepts necessary to deal with emotions and feelings. To achieve this, Molina says, "we designed a modular system that includes, among other things, a two-level multiagent architecture."

A survey was used to evaluate the system, with the results showing that users are able to identify the type of music composed by the computer. A person with no musical knowledge whatsoever can use this artificial musical composer, because the user need do nothing more than decide on the type of music."

Beneath the system's ease of use, Miguel Molina reveals that a complex framework is at work to allow the computer to imitate a feature as human as creativity. Aside from creativity, music also requires specific knowledge.

According to Molina, this "is usually something done by human beings, although they do not understand how they do it. In reality, there are numerous processes involved in the creation of music and, unfortunately, we still do not understand many of them. Others are so complex that we cannot analyse them, despite the enormous power of current computing tools. Nowadays, thanks to the advances made in computer sciences, there are areas of research -- such as artificial intelligence -- that seek to reproduce human behaviour. One of the most difficult facets of all to reproduce is creativity."

Farewell to copyright payments

Commercial development of this prototype will not only change the way in which research is carried out into the relationship between computers and emotions, the means of interacting with music and structures by which music is composed in the future. It will also serve, say the study's authors, to reduce costs.

According to the researchers, "music is highly present in our leisure and working environments, and a large number of the places we visit have canned music systems. Playing these pieces of music involves copyright payments. Our system will make these music copyright payments a thing of the past."

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Loud Music Can Make You Drink More, In Less Time, In A Bar

Commercial venues are very aware of the effects that the environment -- in this case, music -- can have on in-store traffic flow, sales volumes, product choices, and consumer time spent in the immediate vicinity. A study of the effects of music levels on drinking in a bar setting has found that loud music leads to more drinking in less time.

"Previous research had shown that fast music can cause fast drinking, and that music versus no music can cause a person to spend more time in a bar," said Nicolas Guéguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France, and corresponding author for the study. "This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption."

Researchers discretely visited two bars for three Saturday evenings in a medium-size city located in the west of France. The study subjects, 40 males 18 to 25 years of age, were unaware that they were being observed; only those who ordered a glass of draft beer (25 cl. or 8 oz.) were included. With permission from the bar owners, observers would randomly manipulate the sound levels (either 72 dB, considered normal, or 88 dB, considered high) of the music in the bar (Top 40 songs) before choosing a participant. After the observed participant left the bar, sound levels were again randomly selected and a new participant was chosen.

Results showed that high sound levels led to increased drinking, within a decreased amount of time.

Guéguen and his colleagues offered two hypotheses for why this may have occurred. "One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,"" said Guéguen. "Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less."

In France, observed Guéguen, more than 70,000 persons per year die because of chronic alcohol consumption, and alcohol is associated with the majority of fatal car accidents. "We have shown that environmental music played in a bar is associated with an increase in drinking," he said. "We need to encourage bar owners to play music at more of a moderate level ... and make consumers aware that loud music can influence their alcohol consumption."

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Listening To Music Can Change The Way You Judge Facial Emotions

It is often said that music is the language of emotions. Simply, we are moved by music. But can these musically induced emotions arising through the auditory sense influence our interpretation of emotions arising through other senses (eg visual)?

A recent research project led by Dr Joydeep Bhattacharya at Goldsmiths, University of London showed that it is indeed possible to influence emotional evaluation of visual stimuli by listening to musical excerpts before the evaluation. Volunteers listened to a short musical excerpt (15 seconds) and then judged the emotional content of a face.

The research found that the prior listening to happy music significantly enhanced the perceived happiness of a face and likewise listening to sad music significantly enhanced the perceived sadness of a face, and this music-induced effect was maximal when the face was emotionally neutral. Further, by recording brain waves, the study showed that prior listening to music could induce changes in the brain activation patterns which are usually not directly under our conscious control.

"What surprises us," Bhattacharya said, "is that even as short as 15 sec of music can cause this effect. However more research is needed to find how long the effect lasts or if, and how, other factors such as musical preference, personality, control this effect.

" So next time you meet your boss, listen to a happy tune beforehand. At least they will appear pleasant even though they might reject your holiday application!

"Although music is primarily related to auditory modality," Dr. Bhattacharya commented, "it has functionally significant cross-modal components: some of which we can consciously control, and some others, possibly not!"

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Musical Training Boosts Brain Growth

Research has revealed significant differences in the gray matter distribution between professional musicians trained at an early age and non-musicians, as presented today at the American Academy of Neurology's 53rd Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The musicians in the study had more relative gray matter volume in left and right primary sensorimotor regions, the left more than the right intraparietal sulcus region, the left basal ganglia region and the left posterior perisylvian region, with pronounced differences also seen in the cerebellum bilaterally.

"We were interested to know whether intense environmental demands such as musical training at an early age influenced actual brain growth and development," comments study leader Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD. Results of this cross-sectional study may indicate use-dependent brain growth or structural plasticity of gray matter volume in response to such demands during a critical period of brain maturation. "An alternative explanation may be that these musicians were born with these differences, which may draw them toward their musical gifts." Fifteen male professional musicians and 15 age and gender matched non-musicians were included in the study conducted by neurologist Schlaug and Gaser Christian, PhD, of Germany, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston. Using a magnetic resonance imaging sequence, they compared high resolution anatomical datasets of the professional musicians' and non-musicians' brains on a voxel-by-voxel basis using SPM99 software.

"Musicians typically commence training at an early age, making them ideal subjects for this type of investigation," notes Schlaug. These presumed cerebral adaptations may not only lead to modifications of functional sensory and motor maps, but may also lead to structural adaptations within the sensorimotor system.

"However," Schlaug concludes, "additional study is necessary to confirm causal relationships between intense motor training for a long period of time and structural changes in motor and non-motor related brain regions." Schlaug is continuing this study to identify areas of the brain that are different, and to determine if training and experience create the differences.

Kate Melville

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Musical Training Might Be Good For The Heart

Musical training might be good for the heart, suggests a small study, which shows that it is musical tempo, rather than style, that is the greatest stress buster. The findings, published ahead of print in Heart, are based on various aspects of breathing and circulation, in 24 young men and women, taken before and while they listened to short excerpts of music.

Half of those taking part were trained musicians, who had been playing instruments for at least seven years. The remainder had had no musical training. Each participant listened to short tracks of different types of music in random order, for 2 minutes, followed by the same selection of tracks for 4 minutes each. A 2 minute pause was randomly inserted into each of these sequences.
Participants listened to raga (Indian classical music), Beethoven's ninth symphony (slow classical), rap (the Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Vivaldi (fast classical), techno, and Anton Webern (slow "dodecaphonic music").

Faster music, and more complex rhythms, speeded up breathing and circulation, irrespective of style, with fast classical and techno music having the same impact. But the faster the music, the greater was the degree of physiological arousal. Similarly, slower or more meditative music had the opposite effect, with raga music creating the largest fall in heart rate.

But during the pauses, all the indicators of physiological arousal fell below those registered before the participants started to listen to any of the tracks.

This effect occurred, irrespective of the musical style or preferences of the listener, but was stronger among the musicians, who are trained to synchronise their breathing with musical phrases.

Passive listening to music initially induces varying levels of arousal, proportional to the tempo, say the authors, while calm is induced by slower rhythms or pauses.

They suggest that this could therefore be helpful in heart disease and stroke. Other research has shown that music can cut stress, improve athletic performance, improve movement in neurologically impaired patients, and even boost milk production in cattle.

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Music Reduces Stress In Heart Disease Patients

Listening to music may benefit patients who suffer severe stress and anxiety associated with having and undergoing treatment for coronary heart disease. A Cochrane Systematic Review found that listening to music could decrease blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of anxiety in heart patients. Living with heart disease is extremely stressful. The uncertainties and anxieties surrounding diagnosis and the various medical procedures involved in treatment can significantly worsen the condition. For example, stress can increase blood pressure, leading to increased risk of complications. Music listening may help to alleviate stress and therefore reduce this risk.

"Our findings suggest music listening may be beneficial for heart disease patients," says Joke Bradt, who works at the Arts and Quality of Life Research Center at Temple University in Philadelphia. "But the trials we looked at were generally small and varied in terms of styles of music used and length of music sessions. More research on the specifics of music listening is certainly warranted."

The researchers reviewed data from 23 studies, which together included 1,461 patients. Two studies focused on patients treated by trained music therapists, but most did not, using instead interventions where patients listened to pre-recorded music on CDs offered by healthcare professionals.

Listening to music provided some relief for coronary heart disease patients suffering from anxiety, by reducing heart rate and blood pressure. There was also some indication that music listening improved mood, although no improvement was seen for patients suffering from depression due to the disease.

"We all know that music can impact on our emotions, our physiological responses, as well as our outlook on life, and this early research shows that it is well worth finding out more about how it could help heart disease patients. In particular, it would be interesting to learn more about the potential benefits of music offered by trained music therapists, which may be differ substantially from those associated with pre-recorded music," says Bradt.

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Music Thought to Enhance Intelligence, Mental Health and Immune System

A recent volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences takes a closer look at how music evolved and how we respond to it. Contributors to the volume believe that animals such as birds, dolphins and whales make sounds analogous to music out of a desire to imitate each other. This ability to learn and imitate sounds is a trait necessary to acquire language and scientists feel that many of the sounds animals make may be precursors to human music. Another study in the volume looks at whether music training can make individuals smarter. Scientists found more grey matter in the auditory cortex of the right hemisphere in musicians compared to nonmusicians. They feel these differences are probably not genetic, but instead due to use and practice.
Listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, has recently been thought to enhance performance on cognitive tests. Contributors to this volume take a closer look at this assertion and their findings indicate that listening to any music that is personally enjoyable has positive effects on cognition. In addition, the use of music to enhance memory is explored and research suggests that musical recitation enhances the coding of information by activating neural networks in a more united and thus more optimal fashion.

Other studies in this volume look at music's positive effects on health and immunity, how music is processed in the brain, the interplay between language and music, and the relationship between our emotions and music.

The Neurosciences and Music II is volume 1060 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

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