We have already reviewed in our blog the benefits of music in children and even how music affects your brain, through the computer graphics ‘The psychology of music’. Music in general, and classical music in particular, has always been given a wide range of benefits.
Among other things, it is said to reduce stress, improve mood or even positively affect plants and animals. Here we review some of the proven benefits of listening to classical music:
Why listen to classical music
Not only classical music, but music in general, imitates the tonal characteristics of the emotion of the voice and has the ability to cause chills or produce joy, even in different cultures.
For example, Western music causes emotions of excitement or joy. This is because music imitates the tonal characteristics of the emotion of the voice, taking advantage of our ability to communicate and our cultural associations in the same way.
On the contrary, classical music can lower blood pressure, combat insomnia, improve performance, space-time reasoning, and short-term memory.
Music influences our mood and causes a series of sensations that affect the whole brain helping to reduce pain and anxiety.
The positive influence of classical music in the treatment of some diseases has been demonstrated. There are several neurological disorders that, although they have no cure, use music as a form of treatment: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, and different forms of autism.
For example, according to research published in The Journal of Surgery Cardiothoracic, listening to classical music or opera after a heart transplant can mean the difference between success and failure, as they have found that music reduces anxiety, pain, and nausea.
And they even claim that there may be some effect on the parasympathetic nervous system (a part of the nervous system whose function is to control unconscious things in our body, such as digestion).
Listening to classical music could combat insomnia. The University of Toronto says that “the rhythms and tonal patterns of this type of music create a meditative mood and slow brain waves,” which helps you fall asleep faster.
This is due to the rhythms and tonal patterns of this type of music, which create a meditative mood and slow brain waves.
Playing an instrument can improve the ability to learn languages. According to the Northwestern University of Illinois, the brain connections that occur when an instrument is played can help other forms of communication such as speaking, reading, or understanding other languages.
Classical music reduces stress and may help lower blood pressure. According to some studies, listening to soft classical music a couple of times a week would help reduce your stress and anxiety levels.
And if you reduce stress, this, in turn, affects blood pressure, according to comparisons made in a University of San Diego study between classical music and jazz, pop, or other music. Those who listened to classical music had lower blood pressure levels.
Listening to classical music, as well as learning to play an instrument and musical language could improve performance so that people get better academic results and suffer less school failure. The effectiveness of music has been demonstrated in impregnating constancy, discipline, and rigor in the students who study it.
For example, the next U.S. study also showed that those with some form of music education scored higher on college entrance exams.
Those who studied music scored 61 points higher than their peers in verbal tests and 42 in mathematics, while those who played instruments scored 53 and 39 points higher respectively in both tests.
Music helps to overcome dyslexia. It has been shown that studying a musical language or playing the piano significantly improves the coordination of dyslexic people.
“Researchers argue […] that early music practice benefits (children with dyslexia) in learning to read. María Celia Ruiz Bernal, Director of the Royal Conservatory of Music “Victoria Eugenia” of Granada in the article “Dyslexia and Music Therapy”.
The “Mozart effect” is the series of supposed benefits of listening to the music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which means that it temporarily improves spatial-temporal reasoning and short-term memory.
However, this effect continues to be the subject of research and there are many opinions that cast doubt on it, such as that of biologist Nicholas Spitzer of the University of California, who questioned the existence of the Mozart effect based on his interpretations of a study that said that there was no effect on brain activity or ability to listen to Mozart’s music.
Music helps integration, as in this case of an autistic girl who expresses herself through music shows, or as this initiative in favor of cancer patients who taught through music to understand what other people feel.
