Music and The Brain

The brain is a complex and intricate work of art. Everything that our bodies can do we have our brain to thank for. I can’t express the sophistication of this organ in a sole article, nor do I know enough to even scratch the surface. However, what I do know is how music effects the brain, which I presented about during MLK day.

To start off, Let’s get a simple overview of the lobes of the brain, this will help us understand exactly what parts of the brain music targets. Starting off with the Central Nervous System, or CNS is the made up of the brain and the spinal chord which attaches to the brain stem right on the back of your neck. This system is what controls every process that regulates our body.

The frontal lobe is the the largest lobe of the brain. This is the one you are most likely the most familiar with, as it is involved with your personality characteristics, decision-making, and movement. Moving to the top of your brain, the parietal lobe, helps you identify objects and understand where you are relative to things around you. This is also the lobe that allows us to feel pain and touch in our body, and helps us understand spoken language. Now in the back of the brain, the occipital lobe is involved with vision. Finally, located on either side of the brain, the temporal lobes are responsible for short term memory, speech, musical rhythm, and our ability to recognize smell.

In the image just below you can see an MRI scan of a healthy human brain. 

The image just under is a  human brain’s reaction to tango. This is a computer simulation of an  fMRI  brain scan (which stands for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) This is taken from all views of the brain.

The red areas signify high activity and the blue areas signify lower activity. On the scan, there are a lot of red areas, especially for the temporal lobe, which is responsible for musical rhythm. Now, if this was a song with lyrics, the parietal lobe would also be red because that’s the lobe of the brain that helps us understand spoken language. Even better, if you were watching a music video, the occipital lobe would ALSO be red as this is the area of the brain that is involved with vision. This is what’s happening in your brain when you experience “chills” while listening to music.  There is so much more complexity that is involved, but this hopefully provides you with more understanding of how the brain responds to music.