Music, Mood and the Brain by Yuuki Rosby Have you ever wondered why when you watch

a movie, your heart beats quickly during action scenes in movies, or why you feel sad when melancholy music plays? When we hear music, it activates certain parts of the brain. The frontal and temporal lobes activate to figure out the pitch, rhythm and the melody of the sound to see if we recognize the song. If the song has lyrics, the Broca and Wernicke process the words. The visual cortex, which processes visual information, is also affected by sound. The brain tries to visualize and construct the pitches and rhythms of the music to get a better sense of the song. Music also triggers neurons in the motor cortex, which is involved with our planning, control, and execution of movement. This allows us to tap our feet and dance to the music. Memories associated with the song cause the medial prefrontal to light up. The cerebellum tries to figure out where the musical piece will go next based on songs its heard before. Memories associated with the song cause the medial prefrontal to light up. Music reinforces and causes certain emotions and feelings. Happy melodies generally consist of notes and melodies that are high pitched, which make us feel physically happier. When we hear happy melodies, the reward centers in our brain releases dopamine, which gives us the same feeling as eating chocolate or winning a game. Sad music, on the other hand, consists of slow melodies with deep notes and tones. This causes our pulse to lower and heightens blood pressure. According to Molly Edmonds of How Stuff Works, Humans are hardwired to interpret, and react emotionally to a piece of music. Babies as young as five months old can react to happy songs and babies nine months old can recognize sad music. To test musics effect on the brain, I created an experiment inspired by David Merill. In his experiment, he divided mice up into three groups and made them complete a maze. Each group listened to different genres of music for up to 10 hours, and afterwards they were put in the maze again. He found that the mice that listened to classical music performed a lot better than the Heavy Metal and control mice. For my experiment I handed contestants Sudoku puzzles. For the for the first 5 people doing the experiment, I had no music playing and then found the average time they took to complete the puzzle. Then for the next ten, I played Heavy Metal music and calculated their average score and lastly I played classical music for the group and found the average time they took to complete. I then calculated the difference between the Classical groups finish time against the Heavy Metal group. Classical music made people more calm due to its simple timbre and organized sound waves compared to Heavy Metals often high pitch and thunderous melodies which

made people more erratic. Due to this, when Heavy Metal was playing people couldnt calmly finish the puzzle, kinda like the mice in the Merill experiments, while the opposite was true for classical music

Heavy Metal Creates Killer Mice by Yuuki Rosby People say that watching violent movies or playing violent video games can lead to aggression. Can listening to violent music have the same effects? Also, what makes music violent, the lyrics or the instrumentation? When it comes to adolescents, music is very important. A study on high school students by Roberts and Henriksen found that if students were stuck on an island, they would rather have music over television, movies, computers and videos games. Over 80% of students chose music as one of their top choices. Adolescents listen to music up to 21 hours per week. They state that they listen because of the atmosphere the music creates and how it can control their mood. The emotions of certain music can affect people just like the emotions of people affect those around them. Although men and women use music to help their moods, both have consistent differences in their goals. According to a study by Arnett Carmichael, men tend to listen to music to get the dopamine rush and high energy levels, while women listen to music to lift their spirits when they are sad or lonely. The same study found that in genres that tend to be more violent, such as heavy metal, people tend to seek it more when they're angry. Lyrics are an important part of a song. A study by TLCs How Stuff Works found that at least 1 in 5 high school students listed song lyrics as their main source of morals. The more a person likes a song, the more they pay attention to the lyrics. Lyrics of controversial music attract more attention. People assume that the contents of a song affects how people think and act. When the content is about negative things, such as violence, sex or drugs, they fear they will gain those traits. A famous experiment by sixteen year old David Merrill aptly named, Hard Rock Music Creates Killer Mice, involved splitting a group of mice, with which we share 99 percent of our genes, into three groups and making them listen to music for ten hours. Group A was a controlled group that listened to no music, group B listened to Mozart and group C listened to Heavy Metal. He had them complete a maze and a week later made them complete the same maze. They found that the controlled mice cut their time by five minutes and the Mozart mice cut their time by eight minutes. The Heavy Metal mice increased their time by 20 minutes, which was 300 percent more than their first time. Heavy Metal music decreased their their senses. The first time he had done this

project he had to cut the experiment short due to the fact that the Heavy Metal Mice killed each other. St. Lawrence and Joyner, professors from Jackson State University, found that college students who listen to rap/heavy metal are more likely to report troublesome attitudes and behaviors. They experimented to find out, whether or not listening to sexually violent heavy metal would increase acceptance of gender-role stereotypes and sexually violent behavior. He had groups listen to Heavy Metal, Christian Heavy Metal and Classical music. After a month they found that compared to Classical music, both Christian Heavy Metal and regular Heavy Metal generally produced a more negative attitude. Rather than the lyrics setting the mood of the song, the sound or feel of it was more influential. Angry sounding heavy metal, Christian or non Christian, increased negative thoughts such as gender-role stereotypes and sexual violence. Overall, the instrumentals of a song are more powerful than the lyrical part. The lyrics can be difficult to understand and might be interpreted differently depending on the listener. The emotional sound of the song is more direct and physically changes your mood. James Lull, a professor of communication studies at San Jose State University stated, Music promotes experiences of the extreme for its makers and listeners, turning the perilous emotional edges, vulnerabilities, triumphs, celebrations and antagonisms of life into hypnotic, reflective tempos that can be experienced privately or shared with others.