Annotated Bibliography

How Can Music Affect the Brain?

Elora Dash
Professor Malcolm Campbell
3/8/15

Croom, Adam M. "Music, Neuroscience, and the Psychology of Well-Being: A Prcis." Frontiers in
Psychology. Frontiers Research Foundation, 2 Jan. 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
This article is about how listening or playing music can improve your general well-being.
Psychologist Segilman identifies five factors that contribute to overall well-being. These factors
are positive emotion, relationships, engagement, achievement, and meaning. Although there is no
set amount of conditions that mean a person is happy, someone with high levels of these five
things would be typical of human flourishing. The author of this article says I advance the
hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively
contribute to ones living a flourishing life.

This scholarly article details more about emotional responses to music rather than physical
chemical changes in the brain. It offers another view point. It is more psychological than
medical, but that is a huge part of this subject. This can be a useful source to offer a point from a
different perspective. I will mention this in my paper, but the focus will be on studies done on
musicians and their brains. The author was unbiased in his writing and mentioned many other
studies that can be used for my topic as well.
Gholipour, By Bahar. "4 Unusual Ways Music Can Tune Up the Brain." LiveScience. TechMedia
Network, 30 May 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2015.
This article details four unusual ways music can improve brain functions. Firstly, listening to
music can help bring back memories to patients who have suffered brain damage and memory
loss. According to the study published in the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in 2013,
listening to old hit songs can bring back memories better than an interview can. As mentioned in
the following radio article, listening or playing music can improve emotion-sensing skills. In a
study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience in 2009, a group of thirty people
watched a subtitled nature film while listening to a very short, almost undetectable clip of a
baby's cry. The researchers observes the brain's waves to measure how sensitive the people were
to the sound. The researchers found that the musicians' brains responded more quickly and
accurately than the brains of non-musicians, suggesting the musicians may be better at
perceiving emotions even when music isn't being played. As you get older, your brains capacity
to block out noises decreases. Studies show that people who are musically trained can more
easily hear specific sounds amid surrounding noises even as they age. As mentioned in the radio
article, music can make it easier to learn language by singing. Scientists found that people

learning a new language were able to learn faster by singing phrases rather than simply reading
them.
This article on a popular science website is very pertinent to my topic in that it discusses how a
study was conducted to measure brain activity of musicians versus non-musicians. This article
can be well used in my paper and it is a reliable source to find more information on the topic
Hicks, George. "How Playing Music Affects The Developing Brain." CommonHealth RSS. 90.9
WBUR, 17 July 2014. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
This radio article discusses how music can affect intelligence, specifically in students. They say
that studies show that students who listen to a Mozart sonata before taking a spatial reasoning
test do better than students who dont. Playing or listening to music doesnt necessarily make
you smarter or raise your IQ, but it does improve emotional responses and multitasking, which
can help you improve your test scores. In fact, a Boston elementary school implements this into
their curriculum. The Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston uses a Venezuelan method of
learning called El Sistema. All students are required to be in an orchestra and learn an
instrument. Children ages 5-10 are able to learn a new skill and produce music, and then perform
for their parents at the end of the year. Diana Lam, the head of the school, says that
implementing El Sistema has increased the childrens test scores over the years. According to
neuropsychologist Nadine Gaab, learning music at an early age improves reading and math
skills, but most importantly, it improves executive functioning skills which helps students with
problem solving. At the Boston Childrens Hospital, Gaab conducted a study to detect early signs
of dyslexia in children, but the team was also looking for connections between musical training
and language development. They ran an MRI scan of the childrens brains while they did an

executive functioning task. Results show that children with musical training had more brain
activity during the test. It is still unknown whether musical training actually improve executive
functioning skills or vice-versa. Neuropsychologist Ani Patel states that level of precision in
processing music is much higher than the level of precision used in processing speech. This
means that developing our brains musical networks may very well enhance our ability to process
speech. Music improves different abilities because it places higher demands on the brain. A
product of this is singing to restore speech. At the Music and Neuroimaging Lab at Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Gottfried Schlaug has found a way to use singing as therapy for
victims of stroke and patients with brain damage, as well as people with severe autism. Musical
not only provides a means for improving student test scores, but also neuroscientists have been
working with these concepts to further the field of music neuroscience.
This radio article is probably the most useful source that I will use for my paper. It comes from a
reliable source and also has audio and video recordings that will be useful for me. I can listen to
the entire radio segment for more information. The information found in this article and in the
audio directly relates to my topic.
Locker, Melissa. "This Is How Music Can Change Your Brain." Time. Time, 16 Dec. 2014. Web.
12 Mar. 2015.
This article further details the benefits learning music can have in students. Studies show that
students who learn music from an early age do better on standardized tests because of improved
literacy skills. Reading music is a difficult task, but students who learn this skill are at an
advantage. A study from Northwestern University uncovered that to completely harvest the
cognitive profits of a music class, kids can't simply sit there and let the sound of music wash over

them. They must be effectively occupied with the music and take part in the class. Even in a
group of highly motivated students, small variations in music engagement attendance and
class participation predicted the strength of neural processing after music training, said Nina
Kraus, chief of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, in an email to TIME. She cowrote the study with Jane Hornickel, Dana L. Strait, Jessica Slater and Elaine Thompson of
Northwestern University. Additionally, the study showed that there is a difference between
students who played instruments and students who attended a music appreciation class. Student
musicians had more improved neural processing. Kraus and her team along with The Harmony
Project, a project working to provide music education to low-income children in Los Angeles,
after the founder of the project contacted Kraus to provide scientific evidence behind the success
in students with this program. Since 2008, 93% of students graduated and went to college,
despite the 50% drop-out rate in their neighborhoods.
This web article is very useful because it offers a lot of statistics and information. It oes more
into detail about the difference between students who pay attention in music class and students
who dont. This is an interesting point to bring up. School may add music as a part of the
curriculum, but it will only be the students who are engaged in class that will have improve test
scores in this case. I believe that differentiates the difference between learning an instrument and
being a musician. The musicians in other studies I have found have been learning for years and
are dedicated to their music.