- Neuroscience experts from Israel and the United States determined that music directly influences five brain fields related to love, pleasure, motivation, language structure, and stress reduction. Photo: Pixabay
Music, apart from being one of the main sources of entertainment today, is a tool that promotes the interaction and union of people within societies. In accordance with scientific studiesRevealed in June 2021, creating or listening to music relaxes humans, improves empathy, and boosts communication skills.
The results were obtained and evaluated by neuroscientists from Bar-Ilan University, in Israel, and the University of Chicago, in the United States. Given its potential, experts say that music helps to put differences between people in the background and bring out their more human side.
The covid-19 pandemic has gone hand in hand with a period of more than a year of quarantine and social distancing around the world. Regarding this, the specialists from both universities focused on the social interactions that emerged from the songs.
Premieres of official songs by the artists, concerts online, videoconferences or events broadcast by streaming, are some of the activities that have gathered the most public during the pandemic, and all are born from the same root: music.
Neuroscientists noted that the ability of this art to maintain interpersonal closeness despite distancing was evidenced in much the same way during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, a time when music was also one of the main bridges to retake. social ties.
The musical impact on the brain
A brain model was developed capable of determining and locating the connections between various areas of the brain when perceiving auditory stimuli from music. They also confirmed the existence of the processes carried out by the brain, which exercise some social functions.
The conclusions of the research were published through a press release and detailed that there are at least five central mechanisms in the brain that enhance social connections through music.
One of the mechanisms makes the secretion of oxytocin (the love hormone) more prone; another facilitates the release of dopamine (the pleasure hormone); there is also one that promotes encouragement and motivation; the fourth helps to energize the structures of language; and the latter is responsible for regulating the hormone cortisol and reducing stress.
These reactions do not happen only individually, but as a group (in particular, when it is an artistic group that makes music) they also occur and are even often promoted, in addition to directly influencing social interactions during the process and creation of musical work. .
A better approach to humanity through music
“Music is a tool that empowers our humanity,” say the experts. This can be seen in the importance of feedback between a musician and the public or the musician and other artists. The observations of the study indicate that during these dialogues the sensory and emotional experience increases.
The discovery of the set of elements it encompasses was so relevant that scientists estimated that music could become, in the not too distant future, the best channel to gradually eliminate the most complex social divisions between social groups, especially internationally. This translates directly into a world with less violence and conflict.
A previous study, published by the Journal of Neuro-Psychiatry of the Peruvian University of Cayetano Heredia, indicates that “those who argue that life without music is simply unimaginable” are right, since it evaluates all the functions and positive consequences it generates. Some of these derive from the emotional field that promotes subjective sensations, changes in the autonomic and endocrine nervous system, motor expressions such as smiles and tendencies in activities such as dancing, singing, clapping, among others.
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