How music affects your brain

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Music can significantly enhance your daily life

By Rachel Sonis

Associate Editor, Ideas

The power of music can't be overstated—not only for its ability to soothe the soul, but for what it can do for our bodies, particularly our brains. Like exercise and sleep, music is essential for enhancing and nourishing our minds, writes Susan Magsamen, a researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us.

Here's what Susan reveals about music’s effects on the brain in her new piece for TIME:

It can be a reward system: If you’re feeling down and begin listening to a favorite song, you'll initiate increased blood flow to different regions of the brain, including the limbic system, and ignite a flood of positive emotions and memories.
We’re wired for it: Music and sound encourage the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which enhances focus, planning, and clear thinking.
Making music has significant benefits, too: Research has found that when mothers sing to their babies, it can help relieve symptoms of postpartum depression and enhance bonding by reducing the stress hormone cortisol.

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AN EXPERT VOICE

"Exploring a new area—like taking a new route when you walk home from the grocery store or biking somewhere new—is really good for the brain."

—Emma Waddington, a researcher at McMaster University who studies how exercise improves mental and cognitive health

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Today's newsletter was written by Rachel Sonis and edited by Angela Haupt.

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