Exploring the Diverse Impacts of Music on Human Development

It is very common for music, sounds and melodies to be present in places such as hospitals, offices or clinics, but did you know that this has a scientific reason? A study , published by the scientific journal Lancet , found that listening to music helps patients during surgical procedures and consultations — and also helps doctors.

Since the period of nomadic individuals, melody has been part of the journey of human development, being responsible for stimulating sensation, cognition, movement and emotion and being connected with the individual’s emotional area. Thus, Carlos Chechetti, researcher at the Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology Group at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMUSP) and founder of the social program Revivendo Memórias , explains that the ears perceive vibrations and convert them into electrical signals to decode and map the song.

“Music activates several areas of the brain, such as the frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes and also multiple cortices such as the auditory, visual and motor. For example, the cerebellum is involved in the rhythm and timing of music; the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate in the emotional area; the hippocampus helps with memory; and music also activates the reward and emotional circuits.” He adds that all these fields work integrated, just like a symphony orchestra.

Furthermore, the brain controls mental and physiological states, therefore, our nervous systems are connected in two directions: physiological processes, linked to emotional and cognitive responses; and psychological ones, related to changes in the brain and body.

Melody psychology

According to Gerson Tomanari, professor at the Department of Experimental Psychology at the Institute of Psychology (IP) at USP, the different effects of music act on individual people and the social groups to which they belong. In the history of humanity, religious manifestations are always accompanied by melody due to their collective and individual impacts: “It is not necessary to go far to observe that music is an important part of the daily life of the most diverse groups in society”.

Within the scope of psychology, the specialist discusses the relationship between music and cognitive and emotional states in people: “In particular, neuroscience has been dedicated to understanding the role of music on the physiological and cerebral states of organisms, which helps us to identify and understand the functioning of these important behavioral correlates”. He also cites other lines of research, such as the musical domain itself, which is a process of learning and communication, and music understood as an element of social identity.

In the opinion of Tiago Nogueira, researcher at the Laboratory of Psychoanalysis, Society and Politics at USP, every melody is a type of text that mimics the curves that the human voice produces during speech and this musicality is at the origin of the melodic phrase. Therefore, he says that the way the composer chooses to portray certain human experiences — interjections that express joy or pain, screams of horror in the face of danger or death, sharp and slow sound emissions that recall the introspective experience of a lack — all of this is expressed in the composition.

The expert cites Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons , as the work presents soundscapes that imitate nature and function as support for the listener’s memory, and also Bach’s Masses , which are full of feeling and refer to transcendence: “The feelings provoked are always singular, as they are unfoldings of what such representations mean to the listener”. According to him, on the one hand it is possible to find impressions of ancestral memories and, on the other, the listener’s actions in response to this are what define the musical effects.

“This happens with the love of romantic music, the fury and violence of rock, etc. Each feeling refers to the individual meaning that each person gives to it. From this perspective, the way music changes our state of mind is completely linked to the way we are affected by language”, he explains.

Composer’s Perspectives

Fernando Iazzetta, professor at the Department of Music at the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) and director of the Sonology Research Center (NuSom) at USP, guarantees that each song acts differently on the individual, that is, it is associated with the context , culture, social practices and even the use of some substances. He cites the Mozart effect to develop: “If you look, you will find that certain music is more efficient in producing an effect for people. Academically, I would say that these works are questionable and, personally, I think this is a lot of nonsense, because these works generally try to give a universalist character.”

The musician continues: “Possibly, if you play this to a teenager who likes listening to funk, or any danceable music, and subject him to Mozartian therapy, he will freak out instead of calming down. There is a cultural component that needs to be taken into account.” In this sense, he says that every composer composes a song with his target audience in mind and, therefore, this audience wants this song to reach them. However, Iazzetta says that he does not know anyone who produces melodies thinking therapeutically, that is, who seeks to assist in medical treatments.

Other impacts

Nogueira explains that music has always played an important role in different sectors of human life, from the sacrificial rites of pre-capitalist societies, to war music or storytelling. Furthermore, he says that music has a nostalgic power, making individuals remember what “was lost forever”.

For Tomanari, society’s cultural practices are intrinsically linked to the effects of music on people, and it is no surprise that they are present in films, advertisements and in closed environments. “Music can certainly be, and in fact is, an object of transdisciplinary knowledge and has merited studies in the humanities, arts, exact sciences and life sciences. As knowledge in this area increases, we will be increasingly able to use the power of music to improve human quality of life,” she says.

Carlos Chechetti says that, since the ancient Greeks, humans have used music for medical treatment or music therapy, through understanding the types of diseases and their impacts on certain brain regions, thus, it is possible to direct the types of melodies to responses specific in patients — cognitive, motor or emotional. In this way, it is able to help normalize brain function, reduce symptoms and improve well-being.

Finally, according to Iazzetta, in addition to the positive effects, music has the potential to be used as a weapon, and explains: “The sound compositions of Sesame Street , a children’s educational program, were used as torture music in Guantánamo Bay Prison . There were reports that prisoners were subjected to listening to that music at a very high volume for many hours, or even days, uninterruptedly.” He says that this eliminated the individual’s ability to reason and, therefore, to prepare for interrogation or think of some way to escape the scene.