One of my passions in life is music, enjoying it, composing it and performing it. Music is one of the easiest art forms to use, it could be said that it is the artistic expression that most mobilizes our inner being or perhaps who has not started moving their foot to a “sticky” rhythm? Who hasn’t danced at some point in his life? Who hasn’t remembered moments or imagined surreal worlds listening to a song? Music usually motivates us (“Eye Of The Tiger” of Survivorrecognized for the film Rocky), we celebrate with her (“We Are The Champions” of What in), accompany us in our most important moments (Strauss’s Sweetheart Waltz) and so we can continue with more examples, because such is the importance of music in our lives.
There are studies that indicate music can have profound physical and psychological effects not only in people, but also in animals and plants, for research into the effects of music on behavior, intelligence, learning, pain tolerance and health have generated several interesting discoveries, as described in his .
MUSIC, MICE AND MADNESS
David Merril, a student, designed an experiment to discover how music affected mice’s ability to learn new things. Merril had one group of mice listen to classical music 24 hours a day and another group listen to heavy metal, then timed how long it took the mice to run through mazes to see if the music affected their learning speed. Unfortunately, he had to cut his first experiment short because the metal mice all killed each other. In a second experiment, mice that listened to Mozart 10 hours a day dramatically improved their maze-solving skills while the “metalhead” mice became worse at solving mazes than they had been at the beginning of the experiment.
MUSIC, INTELLIGENCE AND LEARNING
According to the Association for Psychological Sciences, intelligence test results increased in children who took keyboard or singing lessons. In another study, children between six and fifteen years old who took music lessons obtained higher scores on tests. of verbal memory than a control group of students without musical training.
MUSIC AND VIOLENCE
In a study with college students, participants listened to seven songs that had violent lyrics, while a control group listened to seven songs by the same artist but without violent lyrics. After that, when asked to classify words as violent and nonviolent, those who had heard violent lyrics were more likely to attribute violent meanings to words like “rock” and “stick.” The American Psychological Society also published a report stating that research has definitively proven the relationship between youth violence and violence in the media, including music.
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MUSIC AND SUICIDE
In a foreign publication, sociology professor James Gundlach discovered high suicide rates among those who listened to music countryHowever, Gundlach emphasizes that this relationship with suicide occurred only with music. country of yesteryear, which, according to him, does not have a pace as fast as the current one.
MUSIC THERAPY AND AUTISM
Music therapy is particularly helpful for autistic students who have difficulty interacting with classmates and teachers, becoming agitated in noisy and changing environments. Autistic students respond very well to music therapy, which can be used to help them stay calm under stress and socialize more effectively, and many autistic children have spectacular musical abilities.
MUSIC AND PAIN REDUCTION
Researchers have found that some patients who listened to harp, piano, synthesizer, orchestra or slow jazz experienced less post-surgical pain than those who did not.
MUSIC AND PLANT HEALTH
A series of experiments conducted by Dorothy Retallack to learn about the effects of music on plants are described in her 1973 book “The Sound of Music and Plants.” Retallack played rock music (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge) to one group of plants and jazz to another group. After two weeks, the “jazz” plants were healthy and had gravitated towards the radio, for their part, The “rock” plants had grown very tall and drooping, with faded flowers, and most died within sixteen days. Retallack dealt with other types of music, including music country, but the plants showed no reaction and with modern classical music (discordant) which caused the plants to lean away from the radio. The plants seemed to like Bach, the North Indian zither, and soft music more.
Other people have conducted similar experiments and some claim to have achieved similar results, however, Retallack has been criticized for using unscientific methods in her experiments.
Most music studies to date have used small samples and some have not controlled for error and confounding variables, so while these findings are compelling, more research is still needed. However, since so many studies have generated similar results for certain types of music, the psychology of music is certainly worthy of further exploration.
Research on music is a very little explored and appreciated area, but its discoveries are extremely rich for our professional work and for human life in general. We are talking about what moves us all, that music that is constantly playing in our heads with every random rhythm that we hear on the street and in our memories of moments, movies, feelings, etc. Personally, I really like this area of research and I hope to soon be able to share my research work on music and personality, but for now, we hope the topic is of interest and we can share opinions about it.