• Question: What changes in brain activity when listening to music? And how does the brain receive the information?

    Asked by anon-252191 on 29 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Luke Bryden

      Luke Bryden answered on 29 Apr 2020:

      The outermost layer of the brain known as the cortex has a dedicated area for processing information about sound: the auditory cortex. This is in the temporal lobe, which is on the side of the brain, just above the ears. The auditory cortex is connected to lots of other brain regions that process information about sound, so it doesn’t work in isolation! Processing of sound information starts in the ear, where soundwaves causes the vibration of three tiny bones called the auditory ossicles. This vibration activates auditory nerve cells in a part of the ear called the cochlea (it looks like a snail shell!), which are then transmitted to the brain, reaching the auditory cortex where it is processed. The activity in this part of the cortex is what allows us to perceive sound!

      I hope that helps.

      Here is a useful link if you want to explore the brain a bit more and how it processes sound: https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/your-brain-on-music/

    • Photo: Shenghong He

      Shenghong He answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      Luke provided a great answer on the process information about sound! For the first question, I think it depends on what kind of music you are listening. Usually the slow music can help us calm down while the sports music makes us exciting. The brain activities will change according to our different moods. If we monitor our EEG from the cortex, probably we will find more slow waves when we calm down (like falling asleep) and more fast activities when we are exciting. I think here the brain activities are not directly impacted by music, but mainly by our mood, which can be impacted by music. There is a very interesting study about brain and music, in which the scientists record the brain activities and transfer them into music. Then the scientists can investigate the characteristics of the brain-music when the subject is in different situations. Potentially we can use this to regulate the emotion for people with depression.

Comments