{"id":267,"date":"2019-08-15T02:38:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T02:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lvh.msu.domains\/?p=267"},"modified":"2019-08-15T02:38:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T02:38:02","slug":"267","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/2019\/08\/15\/267\/","title":{"rendered":"Music and the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. VanHandel,
I had a few questions that I was thinking of bringing up, so whenever you have the chance to look them over and answer them, that would be amazing.

1. Do different styles of music affect the brain in different ways?
     a. How so\/why?
2. What studies, if any, have you conducted in your field?
     a. How did you conduct it\/them?
     b. If you haven’t conducted any yourself, which have you researched and what were the overall conclusions?
3. Is there an aspect of music (tempo, meter, mode, rhythm, etc.) that most directly correlates to changes in the brain?
     a. If so, how do the effects of that aspect of music differ from other aspects?<\/p>-Eliza<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hi Eliza;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some quick answers to your questions:

1. Do different styes of music affect the brain in different ways?
a. How so\/why?

As far as I know, there isn\u2019t any reliable evidence that different styles of music affect the brain differently in any large way. There are some studies that supposedly showed that if you listened to Mozart while you studied, you would learn the material better, or that if you listened to specific pieces of classical music that you would get smarter. Those studies have been largely disproved, though.

One thing that has been shown, though, is that cultures whose music is more complicated rhythmically \u2014 with meters like 7\/8 or 11\/8 \u2014 are better able to process and understand those complex rhythmic patterns. That\u2019s probably a result of familiarity and enculturation (just hearing it more) but there\u2019s also a chance that it has to do with changes in the brain from listening to that music.

So there isn\u2019t a \u201cbetter\u201d type of music to listen to, or a \u201cright\u201d music to study to, or anything \u2014 although some studies have shown that if you\u2019re listening to music when you study, it\u2019s better to listen to music without words, since music with words might compete with material you\u2019re trying to learn.

2. What studies, if any, have you conducted in your field?
a. How did you conduct it\/them?
b. If you haven’t conducted any yourself, which have you researched and what were the overall conclusions?

This is a really big question, and it\u2019s one I can’t really answer since I\u2019ve read hundreds of studies and run dozens of studies. What I\u2019m working on right now is trying to understand what the musical cues are for tempo. Imagine you\u2019re given a piece of music to sing, and you\u2019re asked to perform it, but it doesn\u2019t have any tempo indication so you don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s supposed to go fast or slow. The question I\u2019m trying to figure out right now is, how would you figure that out? You\u2019d probably look at the music and listen to it, and make a decision based on some aspects of the music, but what aspects? Would the melody give you some hints? Would the rhythm? Would the harmony? Do all three of them work together to help you decide? Is one of them more important than the others?

So I\u2019m running a series of experiments right now where we have people listen to different melodies and change the tempo of the melody until it \u201csounds right\u201d to them. From that, we can tell what the people are reacting to, and what characteristics have the biggest effect on what tempo people choose for melodies. For example, what we\u2019re finding is that if people hear a melody that has a lot of contour changes \u2014 if it changes direction a lot \u2014 people want those melodies to go more slowly than melodies that don\u2019t have a lot of contour changes.

3. Is there an aspect of music (tempo, meter, mode, rhythm, etc.) that most directly correlates to changes in the brain?
a. If so, how do the effects of that aspect of music differ from other aspects?

I think this is something we\u2019re still trying to figure out. One thing we know is that musicians tend to have an advantage in what\u2019s called verbal working memory over non-musicians; it probably has something to do with needing to keep and rehearse information (musical phrases, melodies, etc.) in our minds as we\u2019re performing in order to make the music make sense in terms of phrasing and structure. And we know that musicians tend to have better hand\/eye coordination than non-musicians. But the question you\u2019re asking is pretty broad, and it\u2019s one that people are spending their entire careers on researching!

I hope this helps you a little bit! You\u2019re asking some great questions \u2014 they\u2019re just too big to answer in a short period of time! If you\u2019re interested in music cognition, there\u2019s a couple of great books I can recommend \u2014 one is \u201cThis is Your Brain on Music\u201d by Dan Levitin, and one is \u201cThe Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction\u201d by Elizabeth Margulis. Both are great resources to read about the types of research going on in the field of music psychology\/cognition, and would probably give you some ideas of the types of research going on. And if it\u2019s something you\u2019re really interested in, look for universities that have music cognition programs!

Best,
Dr. Van<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there an aspect of music (tempo, meter, mode, rhythm, etc.) that most directly correlates to changes in the brain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77815,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,9,10],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-dr-van","tag-music-and-the-brain","tag-music-cognition","tag-music-theory","et-no-image","et-bg-layout-dark","et-white-bg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77815"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}