(no subject)

[sestra_kerry]

Indre Viskontas:

Both musicians and music researchers know that we don't see the rhythm, we feel the beat. The parts of our brain that are engaged in beat processing are the same parts of our brain that are engaged in motor planning and motor actions, right. So we actually feel it within our bodies and in fact there are a bunch of our biological rhythms that in train to the rhythm of different beats. So, for example, we can see this in our brain waves, we can see it in our heart rates, in our pulse, in our breathing. We tend to sync up with the beat, it actually does sort of trigger the parts of your brain that are involved in movement.

Listening to calm music when you are anxious can also lower your heart rate, deepen your breathing, because now all of a sudden your brain is trying to sync up with the music and if the music has a slower pulse, then that slows down these other autonomic parts of your nervous system. So that's why music can be very calming, and in fact, it's surprising that you can listen to music before surgery and actually need less sedative. And we can see levels of the cortisol hormone that decrease when people are listening to music, so we know they're less stressed and we need you know fewer sedative drugs in those kinds of situations.